American Outposts Were Danger Magnets: How Counterinsurgency Trapped Itself
American outposts in Afghanistan were meant to protect villages but became magnets for conflict. The more they fought, the heavier they got, losing mobility and eventually being trapped by the fortresses they built.
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Outposts Became Danger Bubbles
In the summer of 2010, Wesley Morgan accompanied U.S. troops into the Pech Valley in Afghanistan and found that outposts meant to provide security for villages actually became "danger bubbles," drawing conflict toward the villagers. Both U.S. forces and the enemy suffered few casualties; it was the villages outside the outposts that bore the brunt. This contrast made him ask: who built these outposts, why, and when? That question eventually led to his book The Hardest Place.
— Wesley MorganThe U.S. Military Got Heavier and Heavier
From 2006 to 2010, U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan gradually lost flexibility and mobility, shackled to heavy outposts and MRAPs. In 2006, the 10th Mountain Division could still use pickup trucks and ATVs to reach remote areas, but by 2010, due to the IED threat and top-down force-protection requirements, conventional units could hardly get to those places, relying instead on special operations forces for offensive missions. This overextension meant follow-on units could not sustain the earlier operational reach.
— Wesley MorganTwo ODA Teams: Restraint vs. Recklessness
In 2004, two Green Beret ODA teams deployed successively to the Pech Valley. The first, from the Utah National Guard's 19th Special Forces Group, employed an "ink spot" tactic, trying to establish security zones around district centers, and refused to enter the Korengal Valley because they sensed something there was luring them in. The second, from the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, was eager to enter Korengal to find a fight. They got embroiled in a local tribal timber dispute, used as enforcers for one faction, setting off the Korengal "snowball" that escalated into years of intense combat.
— Wesley MorganThree Tribes Within the U.S. Military Were Incompatible
In eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military comprised three "tribes": conventional forces, Green Berets (who worked with local partners, training Afghan National Army commandos and local police), and the Joint Special Operations Task Force (e.g., Task Force 373, mainly SEAL Team Six and Rangers, conducting night raids). These three had different objectives, sometimes supporting each other but more often getting in each other's way. For instance, a task force might kill someone whom conventional forces could have easily arrested, and only the task force could reach remote areas that conventional forces couldn't. This lack of coordination was a core problem of the Afghan war.
— Wesley MorganCommanders Measured Success with Wrong Metrics
Many commanders lacked a real understanding of counterinsurgency and fell back on quantifiable performance indicators, such as ordnance dropped, miles of road built, and number of meetings held. The book cites the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, which fought in Kunar Province for 15 months, losing 24 soldiers. Its commander, Lt. Col. Bill Ostland, defined success by the number of JDAMs dropped, ammunition expended, SERP budget spent, and 10,000 Beanie Babies distributed—metrics that failed to reflect actual effectiveness and were even self-contradictory.
— JustinNaval Officers' Unconventional Ground Résumés
Wesley Morgan points out that many current senior U.S. Navy and Air Force officers have a chapter in their careers that diverges from the conventional path: they led Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan's Kunar and Nuristan provinces, including submarine officers, nuclear engineers, and naval aviators. For example, Admiral Sam Paparo, now commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, led a PRT in Nuristan for a year. These missions occurred alongside the fighting in Wana and Narisan; they rode out daily in MRAPs on counterinsurgency tasks. This experience became a distinctive mark on their careers.
— Wesley MorganMilitary-Media Relations Deteriorated from Transparent to Opaque
Morgan recalls that in 2007, as a 19-year-old freelance journalist, he could almost freely choose which units to embed with; public affairs merely facilitated his access down to company and platoon level. But now, since the embedding system ended in 2013-2014, military-media relations have sharply deteriorated, and a new generation of battalion-level and below officers view the media as something to be feared. He believes the turning point was not the McChrystal incident but the Obama administration's second term, when the military began restricting embeds, keeping the war out of sight because the complex truth that "advisors" were really "combat advisors" was unwelcome.
— Wesley MorganHow Multicam Became a Mark of Eliteness
Morgan tells the story of how Multicam camouflage spread: invented around 2002 by a Brooklyn art school graduate, it lost the Army's competition (the Army chose the ineffective ACU pattern), but Delta Force privately adopted Multicam because ACU performed poorly at night. It then spread through special operations circles, becoming a mark of eliteness. The key was that Crye Precision, by hinting to game developers that this was elite camouflage, got Multicam into games like Ghost Recon before real photos appeared, thus cementing its elite image in young soldiers' minds.
— Wesley MorganIn their own words · checked verbatim
they were kind of bubbles of danger, they were drawing in conflict into these villages
Wesley Morgan5:00
the green berets were sort of were being used as muscle in one side of this timber dispute
Wesley Morgan16:06
We fall back to measures of performance. So what you're trying to measure and what you're trying to get after is measures of effectiveness
Justin24:56
Why are we letting these reporters come out on the patrols and see us like trashing people's homes and see us taking casualties?
Wesley Morgan47:41
So it starts being represented as the camouflage of the elite in, you know, it's like ghost Ricon2 or something. And then in other video games. Actually, before. There are. Photographs of it, actually being. The. The. The camouflage of the elite.
Wesley Morgan1:02:01
Ukraine is going to be the best excuse the US Army ever found to never say the words Iraq and Afghanistan again.
Wesley Morgan1:11:28
Figures
| Beanie Babies distributed | 10,000 | 24:56 |
| Embedding system ended | 2013-2014 | 43:18 |
| Multicam invented | around 2002 | 59:15 |
Glossary
- ODA
- Operational Detachment Alpha, the basic operational unit of the Green Berets, typically composed of 12 soldiers.
- PRT
- Provincial Reconstruction Team, a joint civil-military unit established by the U.S. in Afghanistan to handle local reconstruction and governance.
- MRAP
- Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, an armored vehicle designed to resist IEDs and ambushes.
How to listen
Readers interested in war history, U.S. military tactics, and organizational behavior, especially those curious about the inner workings of counterinsurgency and military decision-making.
The last 5 minutes of chitchat about football can be skipped.