Afghanistan

Everybody has to have a hobby, including the AQ goon squad.

In the hours following their attack on a school in Peshawar on December 16, Pakistani terrorist group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) issued a claim of responsibility and cited reprisal for the Pakistani military efforts to root out and destroy the group this past summer. Under the orders of Maulawi (Mullah) Fazlullah, gunmen disguised in Pakistani military uniforms […]

This is a picture that I’ve held onto for personal reasons and will continue to hold onto for many years. Whenever things seem to be a little tough, I refer back to my time in service as a Ranger, and especially the moment this picture was taken.

Jack Murphy recently had a chance to sit with Chris Martin, author of the Beyond Neptune Spear and Shaping the World from the Shadows series. Jack and Chris talk about the book, Modern American Snipers. Some would say that the military non-fiction genre is over-saturated, but you managed to write a book that is filled […]

I’ve been asked to give my thoughts on the highly publicized recent “events” in the media because of the pigmentation of my skin. Yes, I am “African American,” but I’d like to simply be referred to as an American. My ethnic background also includes white, black, and Native American. Now that that’s out of the […]

It’s Christmas morning, and I am wondering if it’s too early to break out the bourbon. We are at a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan, about 12 kilometers from the border with Pakistan, in the heart of Pashtun country. It’s a quiet morning, no rockets have been fired at the base, and there are no reports […]

According to recent reporting from the Washington Post, the US is mounting a last-ditch effort to recover US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from his alleged Haqqani Network captors holding him in the lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. This effort comes amidst the major drawdown of US forces from Afghanistan expected by the […]

The majority of the video below is a speech by a Kosovar who is now in Syria fighting for The Islamic State in Iraq and as-Sham. If you remember, we put a lot of effort into keeping the Serbs off the Albanian Kosovars back in the ’90s. A great deal has been said (most of […]

There’s been a lot said lately about the discrediting of COIN doctrine.  We have two glaring examples of its failure right in front of us: Iraq is descending into sectarian chaos again, as the death tolls rapidly approach the darkest days of American involvement, and Afghanistan is a basket case.  Of course, Afghanistan can be […]

In June 2009, Gen Stanley McChrystal took over as the overall commander of US and ISAF forces in Afghanistan.  Shortly after he took command, he issued new ROEs aimed at helping US and ISAF forces win the hearts and minds of the locals.  This was supposed to herald a new phase of Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.  […]

The powers that be have finally gone full-stupid on this one. This is a new sexy term you may never have heard before, BOTG-BDA or boots on the ground battle damage assessment. In layman’s terms it means physically sending troops into a post-detonation site to put eyeballs on the damage. When this is done in […]

After a recent discussion with a fellow soldier, I started to think of the different things we military folk do to keep ourselves sane. Not the PTSD sanity, but the ‘I’m stuck here for hours and days staring at the same piece of god forsaken earth’ type of insanity. My friend Sobe was showing me […]