The piece of writing that I selected offers an incredible outlook into a topic that has become a hot button issue in national and international circles. The article revolves around the author, Fernando M. Lujan, who is an Army Special Forces officer that has recently returned from a deployment to Afghanistan. He vividly describes the situation that he and his team encountered and how the reality of the situation is often a far cry from what higher-echelon government figures and media convey to the public on a daily basis.
This article struck a chord with me personally when I first read it because I have been in similar shoes to the author’s. I have served in Afghanistan with a Special Forces team and have embedded with Afghan military forces. I have slept at tiny outposts, eaten local food and stayed up late speaking with Afghan soldiers. So to me, the fact that this person so clearly has been involved in the non-glamorous aspects of service abroad generates even more credibility on his opinions. His description of his life while deployed truly resonated with me and instantly served as a sort of bona fides as someone who is worth listening to.
Lujan paints a bleak picture on the outlook of the war in Afghanistan at present from the point of view of the “policy wonks, politicos and academics.” He serves to discredit their conduct and opinions on the war with a sort of ad hominum attack by claiming that while the aforementioned policy wonks are “sipping their Starbucks, a few mutter the word ‘unwinnable." He goes on to explain specifically why he feels this bleak outlook on the current state of violence in Afghanistan is certainly not most accurately portrayed by those that are located near a Starbucks. He and his Special Forces team, called an Operational Detachment-Alpha, or ODA for short, served right alongside our Afghan military partners and were involved in everything from training courses, to eating dinner and on into operational missions. Lujan and his team are clearly better qualified to comment on what specifically is occurring at the ground level and he does not shy away from doing so.
Lujan offers up an opinion on the war that I have not often heard. Typically most discussion on the war includes conversations just as he has described with people muttering 'unwinnable.' But he paints a picture of a nationalistic sentiment that has grown exponentially and of a sense of security that has spread throughout the civilian populace. I haven't been to that country since 2010 but if the feeling on the ground is as he describes, than I am proud to hear that a tangible product, so to speak, has begun to develop.
This article is applicable to this blog because by being published in print and online it serves to spread a first-hand account of a conflict that the average American has heard so much about, but usually only when filtered through second-hand and highly biased sources. Here is a real-time account from the front lines of Afghanistan as told to you by a veteran Special Forces officer. Regardless of what your personal thoughts may be on the war or our involvement, I think it is important for everyone interested to hear what is called in military circles as ‘the ground truth.’
- Mike Hubbard
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