The Marines have a plan to get at the other half of the human terrain in Afghanistan:
These are not your mother’s Marines here in the rugged California chaparral of Camp Pendleton, where 40 young women are preparing to deploy to Afghanistan in one of the more forward-leaning experiments of the American military.
Next month they will begin work as members of the first full-time “female engagement teams,” the military’s name for four- and five-member units that will accompany men on patrols in Helmand Province to try to win over the rural Afghan women who are culturally off limits to outside men. The teams, which are to meet with the Afghan women in their homes, assess their need for aid and gather intelligence, are part of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s campaign for Afghan hearts and minds. His officers say that you cannot gain the trust of the Afghan population if you only talk to half of it…
On patrols, the women will carry M-4 rifles, which are shorter and more maneuverable than the military’s standard M-16s, but once inside an Afghan compound, and with Marine guards posted outside, they have been instructed, assuming they feel safe, to remove their rifles and take off their intimidating “battle rattle” of helmets and body armor…
Capt. Matt Pottinger, an intelligence officer based in the capital, Kabul, who helped create and train the first engagement team in Afghanistan, recently wrote that when one of the teams visited a village in southern Afghanistan, a gray-bearded man opened his home to the women by saying, “Your men come to fight, but we know the women are here to help.”
The man also sheepishly admitted, Captain Pottinger wrote in Small Wars Journal, an online publication, that the women were “good for my old eyes.”
It’s about time the Afghans get to enjoy the sight of foreign women.
With rifles.
ROGER THAT – Nothing like a women in uniform carrying a weapon to enlighten the attitudes of those who oppress women.
The sad reality was that when I arrived here in AFGHN, I was told that the difference between an Afghan Woman & Afghan Donkey was that the Donkey has 4 legs, and the woman has two legs. Sad.
We can’t change the country but we need to provide opportunity to those who seek education & freedom.
The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.
So there is interesting (I didn’t even know there were femae Marines) but it brings a few questions to mind:
Do you think they will be safe, the way they set this up, encouraging them to drop their weapons. helmets and armour inside the compound? Once the Taliban figure this out, I figure they (the Taliban, not the women) could see it as great fun.
With so many here being against women going into combat roles, what’s you take on this? It may not start out as intended combat but it could get there in a hurry, don’t you think?
Do you actually think this will work? Or just turn into another good idea gone bad?
Thanks.
Kris has hit upon the central flaw/problem in an otherwise logical WHAM campaign. What happens PR-wise when the first such “unarmed” female is killed? Or worse badly mutilated? What will be the response of the American public? Will this program survive the 1st female casualty? It will be interesting to see this play out in the court of American public opinion no matter how effective it might be otherwise. Undoubtedly this program as outlined will/should be effective–but can it withstand casualties?
VX, they are supposedly trying to deal with the “Human Terrain” all the while ignoring the culture which is formed by human terrain. Doesn’t add up, but a lot of what is going on the Military these days doesn’t add up.
QM,
I was reading an analysis by someone discusing the “tribal-centric” approach and it’s viability who threw in the historical observation that the way the highly “uncooperative” Muslim inhabitants of one isolated valley in Af were brought “under control” way back when before they were Muslims by some invading Mulsim Chieftan was by his kidnapping all the women and children and telling the elders that if everyone didn’t convert to Islam all the captives would be killed. Obviously a highly effective tactic–even if a tad “barbaric.”
Unfortunately (to my unsentimental bloody-minded way of thinking) somehow I don’t think our WHAM program is going to work that way…..
QM,
A story about WHAM from Vietnam–and the difficulties thereof under the BEST of circumstances related to me by the I-Corps DASC Intel guy.
But first a precis. The Marines had (and historical analysis backs this up) probably the most effective, “nuanced” and sophisticated WHAM program of any organization in Vietnam. Additionally, the northern 2&1/2 provinces of I-Corps (Quang Tri, Thua Thien, and the northern half of Quang Nam–where DaNang was located–anything south of Marble Mountain was bad-guy terr.) were heavily populated by ex-North Vietnamese Catholics fleeing the Viet Minh and thus were fiercely anti-Communist and as a result largely pro-American. Thus if there was EVER going to be a place where WHAM would work, between the presence of the Marines and the Catholic ex-N. Vietnamese refugees, northern I-Corps was it.
Now the story: The Navy’s O-Club in DaNang was the closest thing to a luxury AF state-side O-Club one could get. And the Vietnamese fortunate enough to be hired to work in air-conditioned comfort there were paid US scale to boot–a small fortune in Vietnamese terms. The competition for such jobs was fierce and most very grateful. But, obviously, not all as my Intel guy told of a story related to him personally by the mgr of the dining facility at the Stone Elephant.
Turns out there was this Vietnamese cash-register check-out girl who worked the noon shift in the dining room. As the hours were 1100-0200 there were slack periods during which she would scribble in something that looked like a “Dear diary” sort of notebook. At first the manager thought it harmless and something she was doing to pass the time away. But then he noticed that every time someone came up to pay his bill she would quickly hide/slide it under the register. So, finally becoming suspicious, he confronted her, seized her writings, and had them translated. That days entry read in part:”Oh how I hate these Americans, I cannot wait until the day when we drive them from our country.” LOL. If it wasn’t happening in northern I-Corps, with a gal making a relative King’s wages in air-conditioned comfort in an easy job, good luck with the rest of the country where they REALLY hated us.
So much for sophisticated efforts at WHAM….
(of course keen trackers along the scent of this vignette might observe that part of her hatred might stem in no small part from observing “up close & personal” the actions/antics of knuckle-dragging unreconstructed neaderthal “Ugly Americans” such as yours truly
)
(PPS: Well, I will cop to the “ugly” part….was it fate trying to tell me something that my first-ever USAF call sign in T-37s in plt tng was “Ugly”? ‘Course that was the Sq. call-sign, but still….had ME pegged…LOL)
If you were one of the denizens of said Navy O-club, then I could understand her ambivalence. All that Navy class invaded by a knuckle dragging AF type. The mind doth reel
Where to start? “…but once inside an Afghan compound, and with Marine guards posted outside, they have been instructed, assuming they feel safe, to remove their rifles and take off their intimidating “battle rattle” of helmets and body armor…” Sounds like the straightest possible road to Winning Hearts and Minds to me, especially with those guards posted outside. But then I believe in the Easter Bunny.
“…one of the more forward-leaning experiments of the American military.” The writer must have meant “left-leaning, but if there is any “forward” to it, could it be leaning, perhaps, over that precipice Our Leader recently mentioned?
Another regular reader here observed under a recent article (I paraphrase), “A civilization that puts its young women in danger of death and maiming in combat is a barbaric one, undeserving of defense.” The business discussed above is not “progressive,” or “forward-thinking.” It is grotesque degeneracy. What is yet more grotesque–and frightening–is that seemingly large numbers of people appear to believe that such doings illustrate our Greater Wisdom as compared to that of our ancestors. May God help us.
First: Ours is a voluntary military, so any young women in the military asked to be there. Second: A program like this is most likely peopled by women who have, again, volunteered to take on this task. I mean, it’s not exactly as if we drafted the little darlings out of their nail appointments and are now forcing them to go do things that they are opposed to doing.
I don’t want any of them being harmed, maimed, whatever, but then I feel the same about the men in the service, too. As far as “left-leaning”, who knows? But it’s a sure fact that the women are at least one-half of the population there and if we can get them on our side it might be a good thing, no? However, the other side of the coin is that if we were to create a bunch of Gloria Steinems, Gloria Allreds, Bella Abzugs, etc. over there, the men will really be pissed off at us….and I could not blame them. I wonder if creating radical women’s lib there would fall afoul of the laws against torture? It should.
Thanks for your reply, Steve. The difference is that you are looking at the legal letter of the thing, where I’m looking at the cultural spirit of it. Long before it becomes legal, then routine, for young women to join combat units, it has to become thinkable. The barbaric label I used comes into play at that point. Once a society “reasons” itself out its gut reaction against putting (or allowing, if you prefer) its girls in the way of IEDs and machinegun fire, it’s well down the road to a nihilistic barbarism. That no one (or few) blink at the idea illustrates the transformation. To observe that these women are volunteers is to miss the larger point.
Any country that intentionally places women in harm’s way is a barbaric country unworthy of defense.
That, in a nut shell, describes the feminista Officer’s Corps. Another reason to tell young men to stay away from the military.
I’m generally in support of this program, and agree that you will probably get better intel if you don’t ignore 50% of the population.
But Kris raises a real issue. This skirts VERY closely to the edge of the Congressional prohibition of women in direct combat roles.
How far is all this girlie glad-handing going to go when the first woman tells these Marines that she is 12, on her second pregnancy since she was married at 9, and that she wants to see someone who can grant her a divorce so she can go back to her family (who doesn’t want her and would disown her if she divorced)? Or the 11-year old wife who wants to go back to school? The woman with the ectopic pregnancy? The one whose face healed crooked from her worst (but not her last) beating? Is McChrystal going to support these women if they ask for help, or tell them to get back under their tents inside their huts and to be happy in the new democratic Afghanistan (just wait, the PA folks with frisbees and soccer balls will be by soon, won’t that be fun!)?
I can’t wait to read the IIRs that come out of this.
I followed a lot of the work MNF-I did with women in Iraq during the surge. If they’re modeling it after that, I’m rather optimistic. As I understood it, there was a lot of work done to bring together groups of women to discuss their (and the community’s) most pressing needs. The resultant programs ranged from child health care improvements to schools for girls, training in skills that would allow the women to make money from the home, to the women simply banding together to address the men in their villages.
I know the cultures are different, but I think that this type of thinking (by the military) has potential. The Afghan women are starting a lot further back than the Iraqi women, but I don’t think we can dismiss it out of hand…
Jas: I didn’t so much miss the larger cultural point but instead ‘ignored’ it due to the fact we are faced with the influential group/movement that has as their goal to put women into combat (and everything else) “to prove” that women “can do anything and everything” (and still have children, go to PTA, fix great dinners, look swell at 40+, blah blah). And they have been winning the fights and achieving their goal one step at a time. Movements like this are tough to fight as you end up being cast as an ass in the press and suffer at work etc.
I don’t like it, either, but it’s here in our faces and when men (or women who are willing to be castigated by the wacko fems) come out publicly with your argument you know what happens. You neanderthal.
Point taken, Steve. Seems as though we may be “agreeing violently.”
Of course you’re right about the gradualism of the agenda that’s gotten us where we are. And you’re right, too, about the general public perception of the opinions I’ve expressed. I guess I’m just at a point where I don’t care about that. Long have I said (privately) that I value truth above fashion; perhaps I’ve become so overwhelmed at the “upside-downness” of our society (and the absurdity and futility of the projects like the one that started this thread), that I’m compelled to stand and declare the Emperor to be buck-a$$ naked, and consequences be damned. Not like I have any great position to lose, anyway–I’m just an aging working stiff.
Anybody else here remember their oath? To protect and defend the Constitution? The preamble declares that one of the purposes of the Constitution is to “preserve domestic tranquility.”
Which, I’ve been trying to do that ever since I got married…
Now I don’t know about what happens as your house, but in mine domestic tranquility is preserved only if My Good Wife is happy. And I’m pretty sure that no matter where you are if Mom isn’t happy then nobody is happy in that household.
Say what you will, the old adage is that all politics are local and there’s nothing more local than the Spousal Unit, the supper table, and that bed you may or may not be allowed to or want to sleep in that night next to the Spousal Unit.
So having those women-to-women talks probably isn’t a bad thing. As for security, well, there’s still husbands who want to protect their wives and soldiers who want to protect their squad-mates, and that’s something the men-folk can easily see as similar roles.
My bet is while the women are inside talking the men are outside, staying vigilant and sharing coffee while discussing the finer points of What In The Hell Do They Really Want? When the women emerge and know what they want, is there a man who would forget his oath and deny it if he his has any hope of self-preservation?
In the move “Paint Your Wagon” it was claimed that Brigham Young had 27 wives. At the risk of making a pun I don’t care if the man was a latter-day Saint, I’m betting that without the help of outside intervention from other women discussing their lives with his wives he would have spent most of his nights sleeping on the couch.
– Max
“Insure Domestic Tranquility” Does anyone else hear the tune from Schoolhouse Rock when he reads the Preamble to the Constitution?