US Outposts Were Dangerous Bubbles: How the War on Terror Trapped Itself
US outposts in Afghanistan were meant to protect villages, but became magnets for conflict. The harder they fought, the heavier they got, losing mobility until they were trapped by the fortresses they built.
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The outpost became a dangerous bubble
In the summer of 2010, Wesley Morgan embedded with troops entering Afghanistan's Pech Valley and found that US outposts meant to provide security for villages had in fact become ‘dangerous bubbles’ that drew conflict toward the villagers. American and enemy forces rarely took casualties; the people who suffered were in the villages outside the wire. That contrast set him asking who built these outposts, why, and when — questions that became his book The Hardest Place.
— Wesley MorganThe US military got heavier and dumber
From 2006 to 2010, US forces in eastern Afghanistan gradually lost flexibility and mobility, tethered to heavy outposts and MRAPs. In 2006 the 10th Mountain Division could still reach remote areas by pickup and ATV, but by 2010, because of the IED threat and top-down force-protection requirements, conventional units could barely get to those places at all and had to rely on special operations for offensive missions. That overextension meant follow-on units could not sustain the reach earlier units had.
— Wesley MorganTwo ODA teams: restraint versus aggression
In 2004, two Green Beret ODA teams deployed to the Pech Valley in succession. The first, from the Utah National Guard's 19th Special Forces Group, used an ‘inkblot’ approach, trying to build secure zones around district centers, and refused to enter the Korengal Valley because they recognized something there was baiting them. The second, from 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, was eager to get into the Korengal looking for a fight, got entangled in a local tribal timber dispute, was used as muscle by one faction, and started the Korengal ‘snowball’ that became a fierce battlefield for years.
— Wesley MorganThree US tribes inside the wire don't fit together
In eastern Afghanistan there were three ‘tribes’ within the US military: conventional forces; the Green Berets, who worked with local partners such as training Afghan National Army commandos and local police; and the joint special operations task force, such as Task Force 373, made up largely of SEAL Team 6 and Rangers, running night raids. Their objectives differed. Sometimes they supported each other, but more often they got in each other's way. The task force might kill someone conventional forces could have easily arrested, while in remote areas conventional forces could not reach, only the task force could operate. That incoherence was a core problem of the Afghanistan war.
— Wesley MorganCommanders measured success with the wrong metrics
Many commanders lacked real understanding of counterinsurgency and fell back on quantifiable performance metrics: ordnance dropped, miles of road built, number of meetings held. The book's example: 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment spent 15 months fighting in Kunar Province and lost 24 soldiers, while its commander, Lt. Col. Bill Ostland, defined success by the number of JDAMs dropped, ammunition expended, SERP budget spent and 10,000 Beanie Babies handed out — metrics that could not reflect actual effects and were sometimes self-contradictory.
— JustinNavy admirals have a ground-combat chapter
Wesley Morgan points out that many current senior US Navy and Air Force generals and admirals have a chapter in their careers that looks nothing like the standard path: they led Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan's Kunar and Nuristan provinces — submarine officers, nuclear engineers, naval aviators. Sam Paparo, now commander of INDOPACOM, led the Nuristan PRT for a year. These assignments ran concurrently with the fighting at Wana and Narisan, and they rode out daily in MRAPs on counterinsurgency missions. That experience became a distinctive mark on their careers.
— Wesley MorganMilitary-media relations went from open to hostile
Morgan recalls that in 2007, as a 19-year-old freelance journalist, he could more or less choose which unit to embed with, and public affairs just helped him reach company and platoon level. Today, after the embed system ended in 2013-2014, relations between the military and the press have sharply deteriorated, and a new generation of officers at battalion level and below sees the media as something frightening. He argues the turning point was not the McChrystal affair but the second Obama term, when the military began restricting embeds and pushing the war out of sight, because the complicated message that ‘advisors’ were really combat advisors was unwelcome.
— Wesley MorganHow Multicam became a badge of the elite
Morgan tells the story of how Multicam spread: it was invented around 2002 by a Brooklyn art school graduate, lost the Army's camouflage competition (the Army chose the poorly performing ACU pattern), but Delta Force adopted Multicam privately because ACU performed badly at night. It then spread through special operations and became a marker of the elite. Crucially, Crye hinted to game producers that this was elite camouflage, so Multicam appeared in games like Ghost Recon before it appeared in real photographs, building an elite image in the minds of young soldiers.
— 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 |
| End of the embed system | 2013-2014 | 43:18 |
| Multicam invented | around 2002 | 59:15 |
Glossary
- ODA / Operational Detachment Alpha
- The basic operational unit of the Green Berets, typically 12 men.
- PRT / Provincial Reconstruction Team
- A joint civil-military US military organization set up in Afghanistan responsible for local reconstruction and governance.
- MRAP / Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle
- An armored vehicle designed specifically to withstand IEDs and ambushes.
How to listen
Readers interested in war history, US military tactics and organizational behavior, especially those drawn to the inside story of the War on Terror and how military decisions actually get made.
The last 5 minutes of football chat can be skipped.