Training Day

Times reporter (and ex-Marine) C.J. Chivers goes on patrol with the Afghans and is not impressed:

The Afghan foot patrol descended a mountain and slipped through a canyon. Then things went wrong. One Afghan soldier insulted another. And there, exposed on dangerous ground, a scuffle erupted.

The soldiers turned on each other with shoves, punches and kicks. One swung an ammunition can in a slow-motion haymaker. The patrol had already been hapless: a display of errant marksmanship, dud ammunition and lackluster technique.

“For months I’ve been telling everyone how proud I am of you,” seethed an American captain, yanking the Afghans apart. “Today you embarrassed me.”

Yeah, they embarrassed him right on to the front page.

There is also a gap between the Afghan army and the police:

American officers training the Afghan forces describe two different views. By one view, the security forces, especially the army, represent one of the most promising institutions the Afghan government has yet offered: a large group of men who rejected the Taliban and staked their lives on the faith that the government would prevail.

Seasoned by fighting and shaped by Western trainers, a corps of Afghan officers and noncommissioned officers has begun to emerge. The units they lead have allowed the Afghan government to provide security in Kabul and extend the government’s presence to areas once beyond reach.

The forces’ casualty figures point to the loyalty and resolve of many Afghans in uniform. Nearly 1,700 police officers and 600 Afghan soldiers were killed on duty from January 2007 through April. Western forces suffered 586 deaths in that time.

By another view, the same forces, though most pointedly the police, are minimally skilled, unreliable, prone to crime and little match for an insurgency that has grown since 2006. Problems are widespread enough that many Western soldiers openly regard the Afghan police with suspicion.

In interviews over three years, American soldiers have complained that police officers and supervisors sell promotions and equipment, skim subordinates’ wages, shake down villagers, take bribes or participate in other schemes, including the opium trade.

Comments

[Charlie (Colorado)]

In other words, they act like police and military in third-world countries everywhere, and training them out of it take stime.

Surprise!

[clarice]

I loved what Jonah Goldberg's dad told him to do if arrested in a Third World Country. Apologize for the offense and ask if there isn't some way to pay the fine diredtly to the cop to avoid having to go to the station.

[Fresh Air]

Good grief. We're writing about Iraq again? Oh wait...

[Danube of Thought]

Hard to think of any basis for optimism in the long term.

[narciso]

Doesn't AID and probably contractors like DynCorp (that Armitage sits on the board of; with General Zinni)do the police training.

[Neo]

This is the price of having a dysfunctional and corrupt culture.

[MayBee]

I loved what Jonah Goldberg's dad told him to do if arrested in a Third World Country. Apologize for the offense and ask if there isn't some way to pay the fine diredtly to the cop to avoid having to go to the station.

I do love that.
In the home we rented in Bali, the owners left instructions on what the police expected if you got caught with drugs. It was kind of hilarious to read exactly how much money they wanted and how quickly they'd need it. It made me wonder why that Australian chick didn't just pay the stupid bribe.

Also while there, I called a friend of a friend only to find he was in prison and had bribed the guards to let him keep his cel phone with him. He told me he was desperately trying to raise bribe money to get out of a drugs charge.

[Danube of Thought]

If you can't come up with the bribe money, don't they hang you there?

[Danube of Thought]

Keep your eyes on California, folks. Gallup today tells us that Obama's marks on fiscal discipline and the budget deficit are net negative. Watching the Golden State unravel in the coming months--and thereafter--should concentrate the mind wonderfully on the subject of irresponsible spending. LUN

[Danube of Thought]

A bit more on what California holds for the nation's future. LUN again.

[hit and run]

Clarice:
Apologize for the offense and ask if there isn't some way to pay the fine diredtly to the cop to avoid having to go to the station.

When we were returning from Myrtle Beach a couple weeks ago, I was coming out of a small town, and got back up to highway speed ... before the speed limit had changed.

Busted.

When the patrolman finally got to my window and asked for my license and registration, I handed him my registration and my ... visa card!

Accidentally. In my wallet, my license is in the front, and visa directly behind it. I guess after I checked out from the condo, I misplaced the visa in front.

Luckily, he was a good sport.

Who would have thought that so much fun could be had for only a $255 speeding ticket!

[clarice]

I really believe that story, Hit. Really I do.

[Danube of Thought]

OK, Hit, your story means I gotta tell (I think it's re-tell) this one:

Blonde speeding in convertible pulled over by blonde woman cop, who asks for license. Driver fumbles in purse, can't come up with anything, says "I know it's here somewhere--what does it look like?" Blonde cop says "it's rectangular and has your picture on it." Drive fumbles some more, comes up with small cosmetics mirror, looks at it and says, "Oh, here it is," hands it to officer.

Officer looks at it, says "Hey, I didn't realize you were a cop. You can go."

[clarice]

*Bang!! Bang!!* The sound my pistolas will make if you repost that story even one more time DoT.

[Jane]

Okay, left over from my college days. Bunch of kids are traveling down the NY Thruway stoned out of their minds. They get pulled over:

Driver to cop: "Officer, was I speeding?"

Cop to driver: "You were going seven (7) miles per hour."

[Jane]

Any news on the Chrysler case waiting at the SC?

[glasater]

I loved the joke--DOT--and I'm a blonde:0

About two months ago I got caught in a speed trap in a very small county to the north of where I live headed to Spokane WA. Had set the cruise control at just under sixty just to be on the safe side as I was going along. Well--I came up and over a hill and heading down the control did not catch up with the "cruise". Bam--there at the bottom of the hill was a deputy sheriff just waiting for me in the trap. The speed limit was fifty five and I was tracked at sixty four. A one hundred and forty four dollar ticket.
I decided I was was going to contest the ticket and set a court date to travel to district court in Pomeroy WA a very old town--for this area and quite picturesque.
At my court date I watched small town jurisprudence in action before my case came up and that was better than watching a TV show.
The judge was very nice but said that brakes were there for a purpose. The fine reduced to one hundred and I was to go and sin no more when traveling through Garfield county.
The reason I contested the ticket is that we have a fleet insurance policy on our vehicles and one ticket can raise the rates a bunch as I had found in the past.

[Jack is Back!]

First, I thought according to the Cairo Doctrine we aren't to impose our values and principles on other countries. So, how does O reconcile our training of Afghan Army and Police using American military values and principles? I mean where does our intervention start and stop. We need rules of engagement for all forms of engagement not just when we can use force. But then we are not suppose to enforce which is even stronger than impose.

Second, talking South Caroline and traffic busts. US 17 between the I-95 turnoff (going north from Florida and Georgia) and Charleston is probably the most active and congested speed trap in America. There is about a 12 mile stretch up to Beufort where on a recent trip we saw at least 12 different stops. Speed limit 50. Everyone was out there exercising their revenue generating liberty - town police, state police, county sheriff, village constables, in marked and unmarked cars. There is one spot where it all of sudden changes from 50 to 35 in like 25 yards. Waiting about 50 yards down the road were 2 un-marked cars ready to roll. Truly an "only in America" experience.

[Frau Jedöns]

Great article in the AT, Clarice! There are so many unanswered and tantalizing questions about our latest D.C. spies. Is it worse to spy for free or for lucre? Equally traitorous but do the Myers feel more noble? Pfui!
One of the comments to your article really ripped into James Abourezk - who really puzzles me, too. Reading his anti-Israel speeches in Congress make me think George Soros was his ghost writer. Perhaps Clarice can divine what his long-held motives are represented here in 1986:
" This appeal involves three actions consolidated in the district court; the actions contest the denial under subsection (27) of four visa requests. In Abourezk v. Reagan, No. 84-5673, the plaintiffs are a diverse group of United States citizens--including members of Congress, university professors, journalists, and religious leaders--who had invited Tomas Borge, the Interior Minister of Nicaragua, to speak to them in this country.
Interesting list of characters: McGovern amendment, Judge Bork as the dissenting judge, Leonard Boudin on brief for appellants, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation., World Peace Council, and the Federation of Cuban Women.
And the winner is ...

[Frau Jedöns]

grrrr -Reading his anti-Israel speeches in Congress *makes* ....

[maryrose]

Traveling in Arizona the speed limit keeps changing...70,65 60. Got caught between two towns and it cost us 150 dollars.

[matt]

one, why haven't the Myers's been indicted for treason?

two, there was a great article in the WaPo today about a company that plots speed cameras and speed traps on Google and then warns you as you get closer. I saw the same thing in a freeware application in Korea where citizens update the same information regularly for each other. It was a bit disconcerting driving with my host until I asked why he was slowing down and speeding up randomly, but I then got in the spirit of things.

[Jack is Back!]

Matt,

What a great App. I need to go to work on that make my first Apple million:)

[Soylent Red]

I always love it when the press comments on what military discipline should look like. It makes me giggle.

This is a standard hit job, a la Iraq 2006, to make the point that, by golly, the Afghans just don't want it enough. They're going to have to step it up or, or, we'll just pull out.

[clarice]

Thanks, Frau Jedons.

as for that case, it appears in the end by virtue of a presidential proclamation Abourezk failed in getting his Cuban communist speakers access to US audiences.

http://clearinghouse.wustl.edu/detail.php?id=10196

[clarice]

glasater, there's a steep hill leading down to Rock Creek park that many people traveling downtown from N.W. D.C. use in the mornings and regularly the cops were lying in wait at the bottom of it , writing traffic tickets. One guy brought in a traffic engineer who established to the court's satisfaction that a person traveling at a legal rate of speed could not avoid exceeding it once the car hit that slope and the practice ended.

[hit and run]

OK, last one for me.

When we moved to Colorado, I was lazy and didn't get my driver's license, even though my Texas one had expired months earlier. We had just gotten the registration for my vehicle, but forgot to put it in the car.

So, mrs hit and run and a friend and I went camping up near Mt Huron. On our way back we were getting close to Fairplay and came up over a hill.

There he was. I pressed the brakes but it was too late, I was probably going 65-70 in a 55.

He pulled me over.

"License and registration"

"Um, officer, we recently moved from Texas and I don't have my Texas license with me. And we just registered the car, but forgot to put it in the car."

"What's your name, and I'll have the station run your plates and look up your license..."

He goes off and the three of us are envisioning me being frog marched to the back of his patrol car.

Oh, and our friend has high altitude sickness and may need to jump out and puke -- and we worried that the officer might get alarmed and pull his gun at such a sudden action.

Well, it took him nearly 15 minutes, but when he came back, he began lecturing me on being responsible about registration and my license, that moving is no excuse, that there are laws and he expects people to follow the laws in his county, etc, etc, etc.

Then over his radio a sweet voice comes on and says, "Yes I have that vehicle being registered to [hit and run]. I also have [hit and run] at blankety blank street in such and such city in Texas. His driver's license number is ..."

At which point, being satisfied, he proceeded to continue his lecture about the very order in society that we enjoy being due to those who obey the laws and that however small it may seem, my actions are a threat against such order.....yada, yada, yada.

But in his righteous indignation at my insubordination, he missed the sweet voice who had continued her explanation over the radio..."...and that license seems to have expired back in February of this year."

Well. Without that information at his disposal, he let me off with a warning, telling me to clean up my act or don't bothering coming through his county any more.

Off we went -- sure that he would get back in the car, get back on the radio to be informed of my further and deeper guilt.

We made it to the next town and had a real decision to make. Stop at the little store and let our friend go take care of that stomach queesiness, risking Officer NotInMyCountyYouDont's venegeful wrath, or to keep on truckin' risking the vengeful wrath of NotAtThisAltitudeYouDont.

We stopped. He never came.

And yes, this is a true story, only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

[cathyf]

...there's a steep hill leading down to Rock Creek park that many people traveling downtown from N.W. D.C. use in the mornings and regularly the cops were lying in wait at the bottom of it...

Hey, clarice, is this the hill right at Connecticut Ave and Calvert St? (Taft Bridge and Duke Ellington Bridge). With the Shoreham on the right as you go down the hill? The other direction is an adventure, too -- when you get to the top of the hill you are at the light on Calvert St, and the car is at a pretty steep slope poised to roll backwards. As a child I learned a significant fraction of my swear word vocabulary when some moron would come up right behind my mom and she didn't have enough space for that little roll-back that you have when you drive a stick. (I also learned the snotty little trick of easing off of the brake and slowly drifting backwards while the light was still red, so that by the time it turned green our car was resting against the bumper of the idiot behind us, and no worry about roll back.)

Yeah, that was a steep hill!

[NK]

Hey Tom--

Don't know anything about C.J. Chivers, but if he served proudly and was honorably discharged, he is a retired Marine, NOT 'ex'.