Infantry, cavalry, armor, and air power have come and go in importance as technology and tactics change, but sea power is the perennial king of interstate warfare. Even the Romans, famous for their undeniably supreme infantry forces, had to bootstrap a navy to use their legions to good effect against Carthage in the First Punic War.

The modern nuclear-powered supercarrier, often the first asset deployed when an international crisis sparks, is the ultimate symbol of sea power and force projection today. First experimented with a century ago, new classes of aircraft carrier are still developed by the US Navy, providing worthy centerpieces for formidable Carrier Battle Groups (CVBGs). But before there was the carrier or the steel battleship, there was the ship-of-the-line, which provided the naval might for seafaring empires that spanned the globe.

Sea power and force projection capabilities are exceptionally expensive luxuries today, as evidenced by the very short list of aircraft carriers in service. So how much did a ship-of-the-line cost in the past, and how does that compare to the modern cost of naval supremacy?

Take the famous HMS Victory as a starting point. According to the Royal Navy’s HMS Victory website, the ship cost £63,176 at her launch in 1765. The United Kingdom’s GDP in 1765 was about £89.43 million, so the Victory accounted for about .07% of GDP* and 1.03% of defense spending**. The website describes this as the equivalent cost of building an aircraft carrier today.

* The caveat, of course, is that ship construction costs are not incurred at the time of launch, nor does construction represent the total cost of acquiring, maintaining, and using sea power. For simplicity, we will compare all construction costs only and GDP at time of launch.

** The only figure I could find for defense spending in 1765 is £6.13 million on UKPublicSpending.co.uk, which sourced the data from B.R. Mitchell’s British Historical Statistics.

Let’s take the USS Abraham Lincoln as an example of a modern aircraft carrier. Launched in 1988, the Nimitz-class carrier’s Wikipedia entry says it cost $4.726 billion in 2010 dollars, giving it an inflation-adjusted 1988 price of $2.598 billion according to the Westegg inflation calculator. According to IMF data, the US had a nominal GDP of $5.1 trillion in 1988, so the USS Abraham Lincoln accounted for about .05% of GDP that year. SIPRI data reports US nominal defense spending in 1988 was $293.09 billion, so the carrier would have accounted for .88% of defense spending if the cost had been all incurred that fiscal year.

But the HMS Victory is a British ship, after all, so perhaps the Royal Navy was referring to a modern UK carrier. For that comparison, let’s use the Invincible-class of light aircraft carrier. The HMS Invincible cost £184.5 million in 1980, accounting for .08% of GDP and 1.38% of defense spending, while the HMS Ark Royal cost £332.9 million in 1985, at .09% of GDP and 1.74% of defense spending.

So at the very least, we can say that the HMS Victory cost the United Kingdom about the equivalent of a modern light aircraft carrier. But a few more examples never hurt:

¹ Based on reasonable extrapolation of 1671 GDP. Earliest GDP figure available is for 1692.
² Unlike the others, this is a screw-driven ship.
³ When faced with differing estimates by renowned naval historians, I went with the one who teaches at my alma mater. Go King’s!

^{1, 2} Years of commission

If you notice my figures are off or math is bad, please drop a comment so I can fix it.

In the first green-on-blue attack in the month of December, an Afghan policewoman named Nargis (also spelled Nargas in some sources) reportedly shot and killed an ISAF civilian contractor at Kabul police headquarters, a secure compound. Nargis apparently planned to gain entry to the compound by attending a graduation ceremony for a police literacy course, but the ceremony was canceled. She then attempted to convince guards she wanted to see the Kabul police chief or the governor, but was told both officials were out. TOLO reports that she shot an American contractor named Joseph Griffin after he entered the area, while other reports indicate she went to the compound’s canteen and opened fire. This is the 46th green-on-blue attack in 2012 (43 have been documented in open sources), and comes 43 days after the last documented attack in Nad ‘Ali, Helmand. NY Times reports Mr. Griffin worked as a police trainer for DynCorp.

Western sources report Nargis is a 33-year-old sergeant in the Afghan National Police, and her husband is either a policeman or civilian employee of the Ministry of Interior. She has been on the force for between four to six years and does not have a criminal record or known ties to militant groups. Sources told TOLO that Nargis was a refugee in both Pakistan and Iran and speaks with traces of an Iranian dialect. She also reportedly went missing for two days during a recent government-sponsored trip to Egypt, claiming she was “lost in the unfamiliar city.”

In a notable exception to its general trend of claiming credit after every publicly-reported incident, the Taliban has not claimed credit for this insider attack and instead simply relayed reports about it on its website (Arabic here, shortened English version here). It should be noted that Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid describes Nargis as a 40-year-old Second Lieutenant (no rank is mentioned in the Arabic version of the message).

The latest Defense Department 1230 report (pdf) estimates that 6% of insider attacks are likely caused by infiltration, 14% by co-option, 3% unknown by likely related to insurgents, and 38% by personal grievances. It is difficult to determine the cause of individual attacks from open sources, but the Taliban is almost certainly not responsible for the proportion of attacks they claim. According to ISAF and information reported on the Institute for the Study of War’s Green-on-Blue site, there have been 87 green-on-blue insider attacks since 2007. Of these, 14 (or 16%) have not been reported in open sources, nor has the Taliban claimed credit for them. This indicates that the Taliban exploits the opportunity to claim credit once they see a public report of a recent incident. Whether or not the Taliban actually manages to play a role, insider attacks have been a boon to insurgents. The green-on-blue problem has affected the public narrative of the war in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia and sown distrust between ISAF troops and the Afghan forces they train or fight alongside.

In response to the summer spike in green-on-blue incidents in 2012, ISAF implemented new policies to mitigate the threat posed by insider attacks. As such attacks become more difficult to carry out against foreigners, Afghan forces have become the primary targets of recent insider attacks (“green-on-green”). As a female police officer, Nargis may have encountered less stringent scrutiny by male guards, allowing her to pass three checkpoints and enter the secure Kabul police headquarters with her police-issued weapon. ISAF will likely review its new policies to identify similar security gaps and close them. While green-on-blue attacks are unlikely to rise to their summer 2012 levels again, it would be extremely difficult to stop them completely, short of ending the ISAF training mission and segregating all foreign and Afghan forces.

Read more about the Christmas Eve insider attack

• Pajhwok: Afghan poliecwoman guns down ISAF advisor
• TOLOnews: Policewoman in Insider Attack Likely Acted with Premeditation: Source
• Khaama: American adviser shot dead by Afghan poliecwoman
• NY Times: U.S. Civilian Is Killed at Police Post in Kabul
• BBC: Afghan ‘rogue’ attacks kill US aide and five police

Julie Meyer Super, my fellow War Studies alum, just published her first journal article on India’s relations with the U.S. and Iran in Asia Policy. Check out the advance release copy (pdf). Below is the article’s executive summary.

Balancing Rivals: India’s Tightrope between Iran and the United States

Executive Summary

This article examines India’s bilateral relations with the U.S. and Iran and argues that Indian interests, rather than increased pressure from the U.S., will continue to shape New Delhi’s policies toward Iran.

Main Argument

In light of steady economic growth since the turn of the century, the Indian government has positioned energy security as a key foreign policy consideration to sustain the economic and social development crucial to India’s rise in the international system. Within this framework, India has been required to perform a delicate balancing act in relations with Iran and the U.S. This article maintains that Indian interests, rather than U.S. pressure, will determine the course of India’s relations with Iran. This conclusion is drawn from an analysis of India’s bilateral relations with both countries, giving due consideration to India’s energy security needs, internal dynamics, ties with Israel, and regional interests.

Policy Implications

• Energy security will remain a key consideration in Indian foreign policy for the foreseeable future. Although investment in alternative sources of energy will help reduce the perceived need for relations with Iran, the sufficient development of such sources remains a long-term aspiration.

• New Delhi’s continued emphasis on strategic autonomy undercuts efforts by Washington to influence Indo-Iranian relations. Engaging India in international energy forums, such as the International Energy Agency, will encourage dialogue on developing alternative solutions to India’s energy security needs while allowing India to preserve its strategic autonomy.

• India’s relations with Iran could prove to be a useful bridge between the U.S. and Iran. Rather than push to curb these ties, Washington may find value in considering New Delhi’s potential role as an interlocutor in reaching out to Tehran.

On Friday, October 19th, a firefight between Afghan policemen in Jaji Maidan, Khost resulted in three deaths. According to local officials, the firefight broke out as a result of a dispute between families (the Taliban, of course, claimed credit and said the attacker is now safe with them).

That same day, a cook working for the Afghan police in Nahr-e Saraj, Helmand attempted to kill several officers by poisoning their food. Perhaps out of impatience, he and another Afghan policeman returned to shoot and kill two of the officers. Not long after, insurgents attacked the checkpoint the police were manning and killed four more.

These “green-on-green” attacks (where Afghan security forces attack their Afghan comrades), already being dubbed insider attacks by Afghan and Western media, are different from but closely linked to the green-on-blue attacks that have been making headlines since August. While ISAF has been the primary target of insider attacks, many Afghan troops have been killed as well. (For resources to track green-on-blue attacks, click here).

We don’t know enough about insider attacks to say whether they are primarily driven by grievances or infiltration, but the October 19th incidents highlight the vulnerability ISAF and Afghan forces suffer from both.

The green-on-green attack in Helmand echoes the complexity of the green-on-blue attack on US soldiers in Wardak on September 29th. In that attack, a patrol of about 20 US soldiers was ambushed by Afghan soldiers at a checkpoint, possibly supported by insurgents from multiple directions. The shootings by an Afghan policeman and cook in Helmand was followed up with an attack by insurgents, who may have been expecting weakened resistance after the cook’s poisoning effort.

The Taliban has undoubtedly noted the media impact of the recent spike in insider attacks. As they suffer attrition at the hands of ISAF and backlash from Afghans in villages throughout the country, they will seek the exploit the opportunity that insider attacks provide, and the Wardak and Helmand attacks may be the first signs of an organized attempt to do so. ISAF’s change in policies and troop postures on bases in response to the increase in green-on-blue attacks necessitates more complex planning and may lead to a preference for targeting Afghan forces as foreign troops become increasingly harder to kill.

With the Taliban’s overall  strategic goal of reconquering Afghanistan after 2014 in mind, the likely aims of planned insider violence are to sap foreign public (primarily American) support for the war, reduce the quality of ANSF training by poisoning their relationship with ISAF, and reduce ANSF efficacy by sowing chaos and damaging morale within the forces. Executing green-on-blue and green-on-green attacks encourages the spread of grievance-based insider attacks through the copycat effect, further aiding the Taliban’s efforts to weaken Afghan security forces.

A Royal United Services Institute report co-authored by Michael Semple, Anatol Lieven, Theo Farrell, and Rudra Chaudhuri (the latter three from my alma mater, KCL), contains a rather amazing claim:

The Taliban are prepared to accept a long-term US military presence in Afghanistan… the guiding principle, according to [an intervieww], was that US military bases and continuing presence of soldiers would be acceptable to a level ‘that does not impinge on our independence and religion.’

– Taliban Perspectives on Reconciliation

The RUSI report is based on interviews with four “senior Taliban interlocutors,” who spoke to the authors about the Quetta Shura Taliban ostensibly led by Mullah Mohammad Omar (but de facto controlled by other actors, including Pakistan’s ISI). The interviewee who provided the most insight on the question of US bases (referred to as “B”) is described as:

a former Taliban deputy minister and a founding member of the Taliban. B was part of the group that pushed its way into Kandahar in the early 1990s… He also made clear that he was choosing his words carefully to represent, as far as possible, the general and genuine views of the movement in response to our questions.

Not surprisingly, others associated with the Taliban movement were firm in their denial of such a position. Sayed Akbar Agha, a former Taliban commander, called the statements false and said they were purely based on RUSI’s own opinions. Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, also called the report baseless and “a lie.”

The report is already being frequently cited in blogs and news stories, sometimes in an almost casual, flippant way (e.g. something along the lines of “…a report indicates the Taliban are willing to accept military bases…”). Context is, of course, ignored. Citations of the RUSI report assume the Taliban to be a unitary actor, and further assume that the individuals interviewed are actually representative of that unitary enemy. In reality, the Quetta Shura has both political and military wings, which further break down into several committees and competing personalities. (See the Long War Journal’s dated but still excellent primer on the Afghan Taliban’s leadership.)

So the question is: does the claim represent a potentially exploitable fault line within the Taliban, or just faulty information?

If there are truly elements of the Taliban that would be willing to accept US military bases in Afghanistan, it could indicate a desire for a balancing influence against Pakistan, which will certainly seek to have a strong influence in Afghanistan after the eventual American withdrawal. While elements of the Pakistani army, government, and intelligence services support insurgent groups, their interests are certainly not perfectly aligned, and current insurgent groups will want to break free of Pakistani influence in a post-US Afghanistan.

The more likely answer is that the authors of the RUSI report simply received a single individual’s opinion, which was then enthusiastically presented as being more informative and indicative of a wider sentiment among Taliban leaders than it really is. Until we start hearing such opinions being expressed by insiders within the actual Quetta Shura Taliban (and not anonymously), we shouldn’t lend too much weight to claims like the ones in the RUSI report. Furthermore, the political and military wings of the QST must align in their opinions if a political settlement is to be successful. There is no use in negotiating a peace with one group if its fighters reject it and continue their insurgency.

I’m excited to report that my Baghdad counterinsurgency simulation, Fardh al-Qanoon was displayed at the Connections Wargaming Conference held at the National Defense University last week. While I was not an attendee, others had the chance to see the latest version of the game thanks to Dr. Peter Perla. Below are two pictures of the game at the conference, provided by GrogNews and Matthew Kirschenbaum.

Dr. Rex Brynen of PAXSims wrote up a very thorough AAR on the entire conference here.

The Great Game (not to be confused with the Game of Thrones) is no longer a game for two. The imperial powers of prior ages have been replaced with coalitions of nations at least loosely aligned in their interests, while passive pawns have become primary actors. Iran seeks to be more than simply the setting in this 2012 iteration of the Game, approaching its goal of regional dominance in a determined but not terribly subtle manner.

Iran ran tactical war games in early July 2012 (Photo credit: IRNA)

Would you like to play a game?

Earlier this month, Iran held tactical war games that consisted of air defense and psychological warfare exercises — not surprising choices, given its current threat perceptions. While the exercises did not go completely without a hitch, they served their purpose in providing live training experience to Iranian soldiers and warning Israel of its deterrence capability (though Israeli military intelligence is surely poring over data collected about the war game to determine just how effective Iran’s air defenses actually are).

War games like these send an important message to more than just Iran’s potential adversaries in the region and wider world. The deputy speaker of Iran’s Majlis recently declared “Iran will use all capacities to defend the regional nations, particularly those of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan” at the Asian Parliamentary Assembly, and of course Iran has sought to place Iraq in its sphere of influence since the United States toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime. These war games are a way of displaying military capability without the messy entanglements involved in actually engaging in armed conflict.

Just how persuasive Iran’s latest exercises will be in convincing its neighbors of its conventional power depends on more than the nation’s military performance. Even if Iran managed to put on an impressive display of operational prowess, its neighbors’ perception of its power is intimately tied with their perceptions of the intentions of major world powers like the United States, Russia, and China.

Opportunities, opportunities

In face of the United States’ unmatched hard power around the globe, a regional actor like Iran would have to rely on soft power and irregular forms of power projection to exert influence. Iran achieves this through economic ties, diplomacy, and — most notably — proxy groups like Hezbollah and the Quds Force. The US “pivot” towards Asia, in conjunction with an environment of budget austerity and war weariness in America, opens a potential vacuum for Iran to fill in Central Asia and the Middle East. Iran’s hard power will still not come close to matching what the United States possesses in the region (much less what it can bring to theater within 90 days), but providing immediate military presence for things like anti-piracy operations or border disputes will give it a new level of importance in the region.

The danger of an Iran backed by regional allies and armed with an effective conventional or nuclear deterrent is not that it would “wipe Israel off the map” or initiate a nuclear strike, but that it would be emboldened to engage in regional disruption with its military forces or proxy groups, the latter of which are an especially potent threat. Even in fairly clear-cut cases of state sponsorship of terrorism or aggressive action, the covert nature of proxy groups and their operations allows enough ambiguity to skirt traditional international security mechanisms. Witness the level of conspiracy-mongering in the Muslim world and beyond over US action in Afghanistan. While most of the world was firmly behind the United States when it intervened against the Taliban in 2001, even its steadfast allies have wavered in their participation or moral support for the war today. The Taliban government did not even actively participate in al-Qaeda’s international plots, whereas Iran is far more experienced and sophisticated in using disruptive, irregular forces in a deniable manner.

An emboldened Iran creates opportunities for other nations seeking to compete with the United States’ global influence as well. The pivot to Asia inevitably puts the United States and China in a contest of arms and influence, and China will naturally seek partnerships with the United States’ enemies to compensate for the imbalance between the two military forces. A United States distracted by serious disruptions in the Middle East or Central Asia, where worldwide dependence on oil and gas remains a vulnerability, is more likely to blink in the face of potential armed conflict in, say, the South China Sea.

Watching Iran’s diplomatic and trade moves in the coming years will be equally as important as keeping an eye on its military development and pursuit of a nuclear capability. While its military power will not be a serious threat to the United States on its own, the hard and soft alliances it forms, in addition to the pressures it can exert through its supply of natural resources. will act as a potent force multiplier on an international scale. The region is very much up for grabs even now, and will only become a more ripe opportunity for Iran as US attention shifts toward east Asia. In the 2012 Great Game, Iran is the most important player to watch on every stage.

More reading

• Reports: Iran war games showed missile accuracy
• Iranian Air Defense Forces Start Wargames
• Iranian Air Defense Units Test Rapid Reaction Capabilities
• Air defense drills conducted in NW Iran
• Report: US Wary of Iran’s Missile Capability
• Iran Ready to Help Iraq Maintain Peace, Stability
• Iran uses all capacities to defend regional nations, MP
• CSIS: Iran and the Gulf Military Balance – II (pdf)
• Congressional Research Service: Iran – U.S. Concerns and Policy Responses (pdf)

The Cathars being expelled from Carcassonne (Wikimedia Commons)

The Cathar movement in southern France posed the greatest threat to Papal authority and the Catholic Church up to that point in history. Such was the perceived danger that in launching the Albigensian Crusade to end the Cathar heresy, Pope Innocent III called for crusaders to “attack the followers of heresy more fearlessly even than the Saracens—since they are more evil.”

Unlike the insurgencies we study today, the Cathars were not a violent movement against a prevailing political authority. Theirs was a moral insurgency, a battle between orthodoxy and heresy that had inadvertent political consequences, and this realm of personal religious belief was the battlespace in which the Catholic Church operated.

While the crusade failed to root out Catharism completely, the Inquisition that followed effectively completed what the crusade started. In some ways, the Inquisition resembles a contemporary counter-insurgency campaign, launched in response to the failure of a conventional (for that time) military campaign. The Inquisition cannot and should not be taken as a direct parallel to the counter-insurgency campaigns of Iraq, Afghanistan, or countless other wars, but can instead be viewed allegorically. Take this description of the Inquisition in Jonathan Phillips’ Holy Warriors:

Churchmen realized that warfare and preaching could be avoided by those who wished to escape detection and so they developed a new mechanism to flush out the heretics and to create fear and suspicion in the very heart of their communities. The result was the fearsome Inquisition, headed by the crack troops of the medieval Church, the Dominican friars. They were university-trained experts in theology, yet their personal poverty and mendicant vocation meant they lacked the worldly trappings of the Church hierarchy and so could not be accused of the greed or moral failings of many of their predecessors.

The Albigensian Crusade was not merely a religious war, but a war to instill the “proper” religious belief. Cathars pretended to convert to Catholicism while retaining their own beliefs, much as an insurgent stows away his rifle at the end of the day to join the innocent civilian population once more. While the Church recognized the need for a change in tactics, the methods it used to “flush out the heretics” were extreme even for that time. The Church also addressed its image problem by using Dominican friars, who were far removed from the decadent image of their coreligionists in Rome.

The Inquisitors’ powers were unfettered: homes could be searched, anywhere a heretic was known to have stayed was to be destroyed, repentant Cathars were resettled in places where no heresy had been discovered. No one other than churchmen was permitted to possess copies of the Old and New Testament, and those whose confession of heresy was obtained under torture were to be imprisoned as a penance. The new measures made it far harder for the Cathars to move around and to live peacefully.

This brings to mind Briggs’ Plan to separate insurgents from the population during the Malayan Emergency. The British attempted to place themselves in exclusive control of the population’s welfare, with the obvious subtext: “cooperate and prosper.” The Church took a slightly different tack, as the Cathars were not violent nor did they attempt to usurp political authority. Their threat was a moral one; they sapped Catholic authority by rejecting the Church’s orthodoxy. The Church had nothing to offer the Cathars, nor the communities in which they existed, so instead the Church had to take something: the freedom to “move around and live peacefully.”

A Manual for Inquisitors from 1245–46 gives a stark insight into the sophisticated disputation procedures available to extract confessions. If a village was suspected of heresy, all males over fourteen and females over twelve were required to come forward and make a statement of orthodoxy. If under suspicion—and anyone could, in complete anonymity, point the finger at a fellow villager—they had to confess, to recant from all heresy, and swear to pursue and seize other heretics. Everyone known to have given perfecti food and hospitality, or listened to sermons, had their names recorded; many came to the friars of their own volition, trying to preempt arrest. Those who confessed had to perform pilgrimages and other acts of penance and to wear a yellow cross for the rest of their lives. People who refused to abjure the heresy were handed over to the secular authorities and burned to death. One measure that aroused special ire was the practice of condemning deceased heretics and then exhuming their bones to be burned “in detestation of so heinous an offence.” All of this generated—as it was intended to do—a climate of fear and suspicion that would fragment communities for decades. From the point of view of the Church, it began to yield results and many perfecti were forced to live as outlaws, or were identified and handed over to the authorities.

The extreme measures sowed the fear which ultimately allowed the Church to succeed. After the assassinations of clergymen and the murder of the Inquisition’s leader, William Arnold, King Louis IX besieged the Cathar stronghold at Montségur.

The defenders realized their resistance was futile—or as William of Puylaurens, a near-contemporary author, commented: “the faithless could not withstand the onset of the faithful.” They accepted a promise that their lives be spared while the Cathar believers were handed over. William related that “the heretics were invited to accept conversion, but refused. They were confined to an enclosure made of pales and stakes. This was set on fire, they were burned and passed on to the fire of Tartarus.”

In the climate of fear produced by the Church, sympathizers of the Cathar heretics ultimately abandoned them to Catholic authority. The Inquisition was a success, and the Cathars were effectively defeated. To say the brutal and bloody process of separating Cathars from the communities they lived in was extreme would be a gross understatement. While the tactics are illegitimate in their cruelty, the Church did correctly recognize the need for a new strategy.

Given the nature of that particular conflict, one between orthodoxy and heresy, the Church only had a stick to employ in its campaign. A modern state striving to conform to the 21st Century norms of war would prefer to use the carrot, represented through increased economic opportunity, implementation of representative institutions, and alleviation of social ills. The problem comes when an insurgency provides some or all of these benefits themselves, limiting a counter-insurgent’s range of non-kinetic options to win the population’s loyalty.

The Catholic Church had nothing to provide the Occitans of southern France; the Cathars were just like them, only practicing a different religious tradition, so the Church obtained control by instilling a climate of fear. A successful modern counter-insurgent is the exclusive provider of a climate of prosperity, thereby sapping the population’s willingness to support the insurgency, just as the Church sapped the Occitans’ willingness to support the Cathars by denying prosperity and forcing them to suffer. The carrot and stick work for the same goal, and but the former is intimately tied to the legitimacy of the counter-insurgent’s ends, while the latter is only available to a counter-insurgent with what would today be considered illegitimate ends.

Reddit’s “IAmA” forum has another fascinating Q&A with a military member up. A former US Army medic who served in Afghanistan and Iraq answered dozens of questions earlier today.

In addition to the medic himself, other servicemembers pitched in with answers from their own experiences.

A sample of some interesting questions and answers:

Q: Are the Afghans generally friendly with you?

A: About 75% I encountered were. The rest just mostly didn’t pay any mind but there were a handful (not the ones shooting at us) that would get really aggitated when we were around. Most were just content to live and let live though. We made it our business to not start fights

In response, an Afghan person offered this comment:

I’m an Afghan myself and there are several reasons they get agitated around you.

1. They know you’re here to help but propoganda hasn’t helped much. They think the army is also there to occupy Afghanistan and take it over. They are afraid you will back lash against them.
2. They are afraid of terrorists, and while you are not a terrorist (they know that), they also know that terrorists will be near american soldiers. Terrorists usually try to bomb soldiers so the Afghans around you might feel scared in that they, being near you, are also at a danger of dying. I was personally heading to the bazaar one day and some woman was jogging away from it telling us not to go that way. When I asked why she said there were american soldiers. My cousin commented that terrorists always try to get near soldiers. They don’t fear you, they fear their lives because they think the terrorists are out to get you.

As an Afghan, thank you.

…

Q: What was the most intense situation you encountered?

A: August 19, 2011 I was involved in the bombing and firefight at the British Council in Kabul, Afghanistan. I was the only medical asset on scene and as such was moving all over the battle space. I treated 7 people that day for serious injuries, 6 Afghan police/soldiers and 1 New Zealand soldier. the 6 Afghans made it but the New Zealander did not unfortunately. Link to story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14585563

Regarding the presidential campaign:

Q: What’s the general voting consensus right now among troops? Who are they favoring?

A: The troops tend to favor the Republican nominees. I know Ron Paul has been making waves but there were alot of Santorum supporters

Read the whole thing here.