I remember when I wrote about Green on Blue attacks over the last few years and they were like anomalies that were devastating, but rare. I can’t write about them like that anymore because they are just happening too damned often. We are losing our warfighters to the hands of our “friends” weekly, and that is unacceptable. This is why I and many other Americans are seeing RED over these green on blue attacks. Green represents the Afghan security forces we are training and mentoring, Blue represents our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.
Time and time again I have talked about how the loss of any American at the hands of a “friendly” afghan is not acceptable, but I can’t say it is not expected. I will cover that in part II of this series of posts.
Unfortunately the enemy has finally figured out this Achilles heel of our military mission. When I was there in 2006-2007, my teammates and I would frequently say how lucky we were that the enemy did not know how soft or vulnerable we were, because if they did we would have all been wiped out several times over. In those days we were extremely lucky and blessed that the enemy we were fighting were very ignorant. But since that time they have learned their own lessons, plus new ones from the fighting in Iraq.
At the time we did not fully appreciate how much of a risk we truly were. Since my team has returned we commonly reflect and talk about our experiences and are amazed all of us made it back and many of us were not killed. Most of the time there were just two of us on a mission with around 15 Afghan soldiers. This lasted from a few hour mission to being on missions for weeks at a time. There were two different times that I was rolling around country with just one other American and a terp in our HUMVEE and no Afghans. Those were truly risky missions even though we took every measure we could to ensure we were not a target.
You can go back and look at the archives of this blog and read through the posts from May 2006-April 2007 to find many posts where I talked about being out on the edge with just one or two other Americans with me. Heck there were some times I was by myself. I truly thank God for listening to the prayers of many family and friends and keeping me alive.
So I get it that Americans who are embedded with Afghans are at risk, constantly at risk but that does not mean seeing these attacks on our soldiers any easier to accept. They are happening just way too often and at all levels. This is evident when all soldiers are ordered to have their weapons in an Amber status at places like the ISAF HQ (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/17/coalition-troops-now-armed-at-all-times-on-afghan-bases-in-wake-insider/).