I have been back in America for the past week and it is obvious my prediction that Marjah would unfold in the same manner as the Now Zad fight of last summer was too optimistic.  I still think my read on the overall strategy is correct but clearly the fight for Marjah is more difficult and will be more expensive than I had hoped.  What is most alarming about the limited number of casualties we have sustained to date in Marjah is the appearance of skilled Taliban snipers on the battlefield.  As I have pointed out in previous posts there is nothing more intimidating to humans than another human who has the skill and ability to kill.  Bombs, rockets, drones, mines, are all deadly but are easily dealt with psychologically.  Skilled human killers are bad for morale, hunting them down should be an urgent priority.   I thought these cats would have been identified and dealt with before the main assault which clearly did not happen.  Soon when an active sniper is identified all the current rules of engagement will be ignored and the area around that sniper will become a free fire zone.  You cannot let proficient shooters live to fight another day or you will suffer severe consequences to the morale of your assault troops.  The time to modify the ROE to deal with the current sniper threat was about five days ago.  One can only hope it will happen soon.  I’d love to know who those guys are and who trained them – 700 yard head shots?  That is impressive shooting by highly skilled, well trained marksmen.  If we had an intelligence agency worth more than a warm cup of spit we would already know who trained these people, where they were trained and the entire training apparatus would be smoking rubble.   But the chances our intel folks know anything of use about this menace is zero.

Labels: GWOT, Islamo-Fascists, Leadership, Warriors