Green-on-blue incidents are what happens when the conventional Army tries to operate unconventionally in Afghanistan

By "An SF Vet"

Best Defense guest contributor

When
SF moved there
they fell in on a ton of unvetted ALP that the regular Army had
"trained." Why was the regular Army standing up ALP, when they have
no real understanding about how to properly vet and conduct unconventional
warfare? Great question. Probably because a sorry officer made the poor
decision to allow this to happen. 

So
the ODA fell in on hundreds of these poorly-trained, unvetted Afghans. So, they
did what they were told, set up a base out there, and began vetting these guys
with the last month they had in country. Fast forward to another sorry officer
that told the team to "Hurry up and vet these guys" so he could tell
higher how great of a job they were doing. When they said they had only vetted,
like, 40 percent, they were told that wasn't good enough, and the officer then
padded the stats because in his exact words, "I can't tell a general we
only vetted 40 percent."

I can't speak to everything that happened this past year, but this is the
sort of thing that causes green on blue. The conventional Army has no business
setting up ALP, but since that is the hot ticket these days, people only want
to mass-produce them. The current team on the ground has done a lot of
good things there, but it is hard (and dangerous) when you have leaders that
allow this to happen.

Morals of the story:

1) Start
giving higher the real story (I am talking to you, shitty, self-serving, careerist field grades).

2)
The war isn't over yet for the guys on the ground, so support them and
give them what they require to be successful.

3) Stop
allowing conventional Army to do unconventional tasks.