Victory Point - Ed Darack [63]
Rule number one on the ROE list—“You have the right to use force, including deadly force, to defend yourself”—obviously ranked as the most critical, and the one onto which battalion leadership focused the attention of the grunts during their predeployment training more than any other. In the COIN fight, however, only in-the-field knowledge, of the kind Kinser had gained through trial by fire during his first month in-country, could provide a basis for distinguishing an elusive enemy hiding in the hills and among villagers from a civilian. And that enemy was as much a mind-set as a group, cell, or even individual, for example a villager who supported a terrorist, but who would then help Marines locate that terrorist (possibly because he’d mistreated others in the village). “Those SOF dudes beat the Taliban’s asses in a matter of weeks in 2001. They crushed their fuckin’ nuts, slaughtered them like pigs. The enemy we have now hides among the people, and looks for support from them. So we gotta ensure that those villagers know that we’re on the side of their security—that they can trust us and the new government completely—and at the same time kill the motherfuckers who are trying to use those villagers for their own purposes,” the thoughtful lieutenant, who graduated at the top of his class from Michigan State University with a degree in physical chemistry, added. “Marines have to be the pros, the real fuckin’ pros, Burgos. Can’t act like cowboys; that time’s come and gone—a long time ago in this war.”
But determining friend from foe would prove frustratingly difficult to do; Kinser taught himself to rely on a sixth sense he’d gained through experience and from members of 3/3. Having run patrols throughout the Korangal, Pech, and Shuryek, the lieutenant knew all too well about the “soft compromise,” where a local noncombatant—often a goat herder or a woodcutter—appears out of nowhere. “And then you never know what he’s gonna do once he rounds the bend in the trail—just keep tending his goats or pull out an ICOM and let his insurgent buddies know our pos [position], or maybe just start humming loudly, or tapping a stick to a certain beat—there are all sorts of ways they can alert the bad guys to our presence. The only way to really know is to make sure everybody in these hills knows that we’re here to help ’em, and simultaneously kill or capture the terrorists and insurgents. I prefer killing over capturing,” Kinser stated with a grin. “Don’t have to worry about prison breaks and all that.” But after decades of slaughter, the locals were wary of outside military forces, and Kinser knew that getting them to trust American intentions was a tough sell; only staying outside the wire, living with the villagers themselves, was the answer. “If it were up to me, Burgos, me and you and Bradley and Red, and everyone here would never see the inside of Camp Blessing for the rest of our deployment. We’d eat chicken and rice every night with the locals and run the hills for the next six months, drinkin’ goat milk, makin’ new friends like that old man up there. I fully expect one day to come back here with my wife and kids and go on vacation, maybe at the ‘Nangalam Mountain Resort.’ That’d be pretty fuckin’ cool.”
“Yeah.” Burgos laughed. “That would be pretty cool, sir.”
“Okay, Girl Scouts, keep sharp!” Bradley commanded as the group of twenty reached the Pech Road—Camp Blessing’s “MSR,” or main supply route, and Kinser got on the radio to call for a CAAT. “Three guys. That’s all it takes.” The burly corporal thrust his index finger at three positions on the mountains above them that he’d identified as ideal platforms from which to set an ambush.