by Ray Wiss
The Tet Offensive marked a radical departure in the tactics of the communists. For more than a month, they engaged in conventional warfare with the Americans and the South Vietnamese Army. They attacked in large groups and attempted to hold whatever ground they captured. They had hoped to score major military victories and provoke a large segment of the population of South Vietnam to join them in a general uprising.
The communists got it completely wrong.
By operating in large groups and staying in one place for prolonged periods, they exposed themselves to the overwhelming firepower of the Americans. They were slaughtered. Although the claims seemed outlandish at the time, the Vietnamese have since confirmed that close to 50 per cent of the 100,000 men they sent into battle were killed. It was a catastrophic defeat.
To make things worse, there was no popular uprising against the South Vietnamese regime. If anything, a number of well-documented atrocities on the part of the communists turned the population against them. After Tet, the South Vietnamese were more united than they had ever been. As the communists retreated back to North Vietnam, they thought they had suffered a massive setback.
The Americans, although initially stunned by the scope of the communist offensive, recovered quickly. As the battle progressed, they could not believe their good fortune. The communist units repeatedly stayed in place long enough for American heavy weapons to be brought to bear. By the time the battle ended, they thought they had scored a lopsided victory.
The Americans got it completely wrong.
Over the previous four years, the United States had sent more and more soldiers to South Vietnam, each time reassuring Americans that only a little more effort was required to guarantee victory. Instead, the American people watched on their televisions as the communists showed more strength than they ever had.
What had even more impact were the numbers of American deaths in combat. These deaths spiked during the Tet Offensive. The “kill ratio” was even more in favour of the Americans than before, but that did not matter. The American people had been promised victory, but what they got was a larger number of body bags.
The effect on the American war effort was devastating. Support for the war evaporated. This had not been anticipated by the North Vietnamese. It was only after the American public turned solidly against the war as a result of Tet that the communists began to speak of the offensive as a victory for their side. The U.S. Army was dumbfounded. It had utterly defeated the enemy, yet the world was seeing it the other way.
Within a year, a new president was elected with a mandate to bring the troops home. Four years later, there were no American combat units left in South Vietnam. Two years after that, the communists swept out of the North and invaded.
This series of events can be summed up by an exchange that occurred between two senior officers in this conflict.
American General: “You know you never defeated us on the battlefield.”
Vietnamese General: “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.”
Looking at what happened in Zhari-Panjwayi yesterday, I wonder if other amateur military historians might draw the same conclusion.
If you followed the news on the various Western media outlets, you would have learned that there were a few bomb attacks in Kabul and some incidents in Kandahar City. Several other major cities received a rocket or two. One, Baglan, was attacked by Taliban ground troops who withdrew after destroying the polling stations.
But what is happening today? Nothing.
Since you hear about Afghanistan only when there is something violent going on here, you might get the impression that the violence we experienced yesterday was run-of-the-mill. But this is the most combat activity I have seen in a single day on either of my tours. And this is where the Taliban are strongest.
I think the Taliban threw their Sunday punch at us yesterday—one for which they have been saving men and munitions for a long time. Militarily, they achieved nothing while losing a moderate number of men.
So this is nowhere near what Tet was. During Tet, all of South Vietnam was aflame for a month. Yesterday, on the other hand, was a continuation of what we have lived through for the past three years. The Canadians held the line in Zhari-Panjwayi against the worst the Taliban were able to throw at us. And their worst, concentrated in this twenty-by-forty-kilometre piece of land, failed to kill or injure a single one of us. With the majority of their combat power tied up here, the Taliban were only able to inflict pinprick attacks elsewhere.
But was our military success irrelevant?
The Taliban did succeed in terrorizing the local population and undermining the election. How will voters in the Coalition countries react to this? No doubt there will be many who will say that (a) the democratic experiment has failed in Afghanistan, and (b) we have no business requiring the Afghans to adopt such a system.
To the first point, I would answer that democracy has always taken root slowly, even in countries with good economies and no civil war. In our country, it took half a century of democratic rule before the female half of our population was allowed to vote. But the desire for democratic government seems to be hardwired into the human genome. How else can we explain its inexorable spread over the past three hundred years? Democratic experiments struggle sometimes, but they do not fail. I defy you to name a single country that has started down the road from totalitarianism, be it in the form of a theocracy or a monarchy, and moved towards democracy only to revert back.
As for the second point, I think it has a slight racist tinge. The underlying assumption is either that the majority of Afghans are sheep-like and happy to live in a non-democratic system or that they have not evolved enough for this kind of government. Is it possible that there is a people that is so different from us that they prefer not to be asked their opinions on matters that affect their lives? Is it possible that there is a people that is so different from us that they cannot grasp the concept of democracy?
The argument that democracy cannot take root in a country that has never known democracy is nonsense. It flies in the face of what can only be called overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Every country that is currently a democracy was not one before it was a democracy. Why do we think the Afghans will be any different?
Churchill knew what he was talking about when he said that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”* But here’s the best thing about democracy.
Can you name a single country whose government was elected by universal suffrage that has declared war on another country with the same system? You cannot. Because it has never happened.
It is easy for totalitarian regimes, no matter what their philosophical underpinnings, to send their people to war: once the leadership decides something, the people—the ones who do the fighting and the dying—have no say in the matter.
It is far more difficult for democracies to initiate hostilities, but they can be convinced under special circumstances. Those circumstances have always included an absence of democracy on the other side.
The world will be done with war when the planet embraces democracy. I cannot think of a better reason to encourage the spread of the democratic ideal. I cannot think of a better reason to stay here and fight those who would oppose this process.
Addendum, August 22—Data Without Context: One story about the election on CBC.ca today. The following is from that article: “turnout was weaker than the previous vote in 2004 because of fear, disenchantment and election-related violence, which killed 26 people.”†
That’s it? The violence “killed 26 people,” period? Would it not have given that number a little context to follow it with: “The majority of those killed were Taliban. A minority were civilians killed by the Taliban. There were few deaths among the various armed services of the Afghan government. There were none at all among Coalition forces. No civilians were wounded or killed by Coalition or Afghan government forces.”
So . . . in a country with a shattered infrastructure and an active civil war, where a violent insurgency has threatened to murder anyone who votes, the turnout may not reach 50 per cent? I think it’s time for . . . a table!
CANADA AFGHANISTAN
VOTER REGISTRATION Comes in the mail. Have to go to governmentoffice. Could get murdered for doing so.
CAMPAIGN RALLIES They almost pay you to come. Could be attacked by suicide bomber.
VOTING Drive to polling station on way to/from work. Takes five or ten minutes. Takes five or ten minutes. take one or two hours. Could get murdered on way there. Wait for voting can be several hours. Could get executed while there.
AFTER VOTING Whine about the guy you elected. Finger marked with ink;gets you executed by Taliban if found before it wears off.
IF YOU DON’T VOTE Won’t miss Seinfeld rerun. Whine about the guy someone else elected. Get castigated by the world as “not ready for democracy.”
The Afghan election saw a voter participation rate “far lower than . . . 70 per cent,” eh? That would be quite low, wouldn’t it? Maybe not.
Looking at voter turnout since Confederation, the percentage of eligible Canadian voters who have voted remained above 70 per cent almost continuously for over 120 years. But the last time we managed that was 1988. Participation percentages in Canadian federal elections has been drifting down to the low 60s over the past twenty years. In the last election (2008), we dipped into the high 50s.
With everything we have going for us, and with everything the Afghans have going against them, there might end up being as little as 10 per cent difference in our participation rates.
I do not hear anyone suggesting that we’re not ready for democracy.
AUGUST 22 | Ramadan
This is the first day of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Muslim lunar calendar. Over the next twenty-nine or thirty days, depending on the behaviour of the moon, Muslims must refrain from eating, drinking, sex, smoking or “anything that is in excess or ill-natured” from dawn till dusk. The fasting in particular is meant to give Muslims a chance to cleanse themselves, to appreciate what they have and to recognize that others may have less. The two most important themes seem to be connecting with family and caring for the poor.
During this month Muslims get up before dawn to eat. Even though they gorge themselves then, the grumpiness level starts to rise around midafternoon. This is alleviated by another large meal after sundown. Between lack of sleep, post-meal torpor and late-afternoon grumpiness, there are only a couple of hours each day when everyone is firing on all cylinders.
Some Muslims take their fasting so seriously that they carry around a little cup into which they spit their saliva. This prompts the obvious question: if the Taliban see themselves as good Muslims, will they take this month off to fast? Or will they accept a decrease in their operational effectiveness as their soldiers go around hungry and tired during the afternoons, when most of the fighting takes place?
The answer is no. The Taliban have given their troops a pass on this one, just as they have played fast and loose with most other parts of the Quran as well. That has been the case in years past. Summer is traditionally the “fighting season” in Afghanistan and there has been no decrease in combat activity during Ramadan for the past three years. The most intense fighting Canadians ever experienced in Zhari-Panjwayi occurred when they arrived here in 2006. The Taliban massed their troops to try to prevent Canadian troops from entering these districts. The fighting continued for several weeks, well past the date Ramadan began that year. If things remain as quiet as they have for the past two days, it will be because the Taliban shot their bolt on election day.
Ramadan ends on the first day of the next new moon. This is the holiday of Eid ul-Fitr, “The Festival of the Breaking of the Fast,” a daylong party during which there is supposed to be a lot of eating, praying and donating to the poor. Human nature being what it is, I am willing to bet that the order I listed for those items is the order in which they are given priority.
I dropped in on the ANA officers late this afternoon, happy to see that they were none the worse for wear for their twelve foodless hours. They invited me to join them for dinner, and I readily agreed. They told me to drop by at 1900, which is the same time that they had told me to arrive every other time I had had dinner with them. On each occasion, dinner had started at 1930 or a little later. This is no different from what goes on elsewhere in developing world environments, and I have no trouble with it. Either I wait and chat with the officers until dinner starts, or I factor this in and arrive late myself.
On this day, I knew they could not start eating until after sunset, so I waited until about ten minutes after dark to wander over. As I was walking towards their barracks, it dawned on me that I was displaying, if not cultural, then at least culinary, insensitivity. This was confirmed when I arrived.
After fasting for twelve hours, no one had been in the mood to wait a minute longer for dinner. They have made sure that everything was ready to go the second the sun dipped below the horizon. By the time I got there, everyone had finished eating. This didn’t stop them from welcoming me warmly and sitting me down to a large dish of some kind of vegetable I’ve never eaten before, supplemented by the usual huge piece of naan.
AUGUST 23 | The Warrior Princes
When I described the role of Major Tim Arsenault, the combat team commander at FOB Wilson, I spoke mostly in terms of his responsibilities. Let’s look at the other side of that coin and consider the power of Major Steve Jourdain, the combat team commander here. I compared Major Jourdain earlier to the warrior kings of antiquity. This is not an exaggeration.
Just as Major Arsenault’s responsibilities dwarf anything encountered in the civilian world, the destructive force Major Jourdain has at his disposal is almost beyond comprehension for someone outside the military.
There are very few officers the CF trusts this much. There is no one looking over Major Jourdain’s shoulder here, and his word is law. We have to be sure that he will never abuse his position. If that were to happen, the damage he could inflict on innocent Afghan civilians, on our mission’s goals and even on his own troops would be incalculable. In Major Jourdain’s case, the trust is entirely merited.
So how does Major Jourdain exercise a good portion of his power? The combat team contains a large number of “supporting arms.” I have already introduced several of these groups, including the engineers, tankers, artillerymen and reconnaissance soldiers. But no matter how many members of the supporting arms might be in a combat team, by far the largest group of soldiers belongs to the “arm” that is being supported: the infantry. Since more than one hundred men are in the company based at the FOB, Major Jourdain could not possibly control them all on the battlefield. Rather, he guides the three men who are most responsible for turning his orders into reality.
These are the platoon commanders, each one of whom is in charge of thirty to forty soldiers, divided into three infantry sections with ten soldiers each and a fourth “headquarters/heavy weapons” section. This last section contains the platoon commander, platoon second-in-command and other specialized soldiers such as radio operators and the soldiers who man the rocket launchers.
I admit that I have a fondness for the platoon commanders. When I graduated from the Infantry School of the Combat Training Centre in 1979, this is the job I did for the next three years. I learned a great deal about leadership as a platoon commander, and this was one of the key formative experiences of my life.
I was a competent platoon commander: my platoon was regularly chosen to take on the more challenging
assignments, and I had good success in field exercises. But after observing the three platoon commanders of Combat Team Cobra for a few weeks, I can see that I was not in the same league as they are. The war has made them develop as commanders, but they had to have been quite sharp to begin with. I sat down with each of these extraordinary young men separately to conduct the only formal interviews I did for this book.
Captain Vincent “Vince” Lussier, like me a Franco-Ontarian, is the oldest of the three. He shares many of my beliefs about the value of the mission and has a sophisticated understanding of who we are fighting and why. During our interview, he astounded me by describing the effect of Taliban rule on infant mortality— the single best measure of a population’s health. This is something very few non-medical people would do.
Major Steve Jourdain, the warrior king
Captain Vincent “Vince” Lussier, commander, First Platoon
Almost twenty-seven years old, he has been a platoon commander for three years. All that time has been spent with the same platoon. Many of the men he has taken to war were wet-behind-the-ears seventeen-year-old recruits when they joined him. He has watched them grow up not only as soldiers but also as individuals.
The affection he feels for his men is intense. He expresses this in familial terms: “I feel more like their older brother than their commander.” It is a cliché to refer to an infantry platoon as a “band of brothers,” but it is very apt.
Even stronger than this affection is Captain Lussier’s pride in his platoon’s troopers. This pride has not blinded him to their failings. On the contrary, Captain Lussier spontaneously volunteers that “the other platoons have men who are better shooters, better patrollers or better tacticians than mine.” But he insists that his men have the most heart: “We may not be the best soldiers, but we are definitely the best team.”