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The instructors at Benning insisted that competent commanders never commit large numbers of troops to battle without having established secure LOCs. They then winced when they displayed a relief map of Afghanistan and neighboring countries, showing the deployment of U.S. forces.
The instructors pointed out that Napoleon had to learn the hard way the importance of LOCs, even though he himself coined the expression "an army travels on its stomach" -- meaning that keeping it supplied with fuel, food and ammunition is prerequisite to success. (For Napoleon, a chance to grab Russia was just too tempting.)
The good news, they said, was that in Iraq the highly vulnerable hundreds-of-miles-long land supply line between Kuwait and Baghdad had not been cut although many brave soldiers were killed along the highway from roadside bombs. But the worse news for Afghanistan is that it would be sheer folly to count on having similar success, given the country's terrain and remoteness.
As Gen. McKiernan knew first hand, Iraq has relatively flat topography and an extensive highway network. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has formidable mountains and mostly dirt or gravel roads. Blogger Ben Gilbert put it succinctly in a recent article:
"Moving all the things 100,000 troops need to fight and survive in a hostile foreign land is never an easy task. In a landlocked, mountainous country the size of Texas, with few paved roads, it is even harder."
Thousands of trucks pick up most of the needed supplies -- including drinking water -- after they arrive in the Pakistani port of Karachi. Then the trucks wend their way through dangerous parts of Pakistan and the Kyber Pass (a 33-mile passage through the Hindu Kush) into Afghanistan.
The transport is incredibly expensive, especially by the time the warlords and bandits are paid protection money to let the supplies through. And the trucks don't get many miles to the gallon.
A congressional report issued in June, titled "Warlord, Inc.: Extortion and Corruption along the U.S. Supply Chain," found that U.S. military contractors pay millions of dollars in protection money to Afghan warlords, and that some of that money finds its way to those fighting our own troops. The Pentagon had been largely blind to the strategic vulnerabilities of its supply chain contracting, the report added.
I was told that neither the Pentagon nor our forces in Afghanistan have much visibility into what happens to the trucks carrying U.S. supplies between the time the trucks leave Karachi until they reach their destinations. And one can only imagine what additional disruptions to the supply lines have been caused by the widespread flooding in Pakistan.
There is resupply by air, but that too is a risky and expensive proposition and cannot handle most of the necessary armaments and supplies. Moreover, any commander who would be comfortable depending on the good will of Russia and the various "-stans" located between Russia and Afghanistan, has not taken the basic course at Fort Benning.
It is a mess, but perhaps not as bad as it may seem. As the Commander in Chief of your military, I will tell you this: I just don't know the answer.
Moving from the general to the particular, I asked my staff to brief me on whether the Marines trying to subdue and secure the Afghan rural area around Marja were having problems with resupply. Turns out that Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus was in Afghanistan in early June, and in a speech at the Naval War College on June 9, he had high praise for the Marines engaged in resupply. At the same time, his comments were a bit alarming. This is part of what he said:
"Just think about what it takes to get a gallon of gas to a frontline unit in Afghanistan. I visited a bunch of forward operating bases last week. To get a gallon of gas to one of those units you've got to take it across the Pacific, put it on trucks, take it across the Hindu Kush and all the way down to one of those forward operating bases. Only then do you get to put it in the tank of a vehicle or generator.
"Every step of the process, you add money and every step of the process you take Marines away from combat, engagement, and development to guard that gasoline. And for every 25 trucks we send into Afghanistan we lose a Marine, killed or wounded."
Now let me be clear, again. Ray Mabus, bless his heart, was trying to show he understands the extra burden that resupply puts on the Marines in Afghanistan. But I thought to myself, "Gosh, that's probably why it costs $400 to get a gallon of gas into a Marine tank there." Mabus didn't mention the pay-offs for graft and protection. But, still, his remarks left me persuaded that the LOC problem may in the end amount to a case of "you can't get there from here" -- at least not without spending inordinate sums of taxpayer dollars, some of which go to those fighting against our troops.
Other Basic Learnings
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