pbi said:
Shooting war or not, Afghanistan will slowly fade away, just like other shooting wars (ones that took a much greater toll on us). It will continue to inform our thinking for a while, to a gradually declining degree, until something comes along to push it into the wings once and for all. Unfortunately, much of the experience we have accumulated amongst mid-grade officers and NCOs will be lost in the next few years by the retirement wave: some veterans who will make it to higher ranks will have had their Afgh experience at a very low level, and will find it doesn't apply directly (or at all) to the problems they have to struggle with. It's called the evolution of armies.
That said, we should be very careful not to disrespect or disregard what we have learned (and, I think, in many cases re-learned) in Afghanistan. It has been a very hard school for what was, in 2001, essentially a peacetime Army that was badly in danger of losing its way. We have come a very long way in those eight years, and now we can see our brothers and sisters in the Air Force coming along as well. There will be much good to remember and retain for quite a while. The war has brought us back to our true traditions as Canadian soldiers, as opposed to the phony "tradition" of UN peacekeeping that was marketed for public consumption, and was really only based on about a decade or less in which our major force deployments were under the UN.
Eventually, Afghanistan will be off the table and onto the shelf. But that's my point: onto the shelf, not into the garbage can.
Cheers
Well said.
As a reservist, I come from a slightly different perspective on this one. I'm from a reserve regiment that contributed 8 to 1-06, 35+ to 3-08, and looks to have in excess of 40 embarking on TF 1-10. From all appearances, 1-10 will probably be our last chance to send troops to the sandbox in any significant numbers. While the numbers certainly are not comparable to any reg force unit, for a reserve regiment they're pretty significant.
Because of the peculiarities of the reserves, few of our more senior leadership have had the chance to deploy to Afghanistan. We have a couple captains, and MWO and a couple Sergeants, but other than that it's all JRs. Already on our tour I was hearing that the more senior people back home have been trying to figure out just what to do with us, and how to integrate us back into the unit. In many cases our experiences and skill sets have gone so beyond the typical regime of IBTS and other basic soldier skills training that most of what we've learned is simply irrelevant to normal training in a reserve unit, due to the specificity and complexity of the various tasks we did overseas. A typical reserve regiment, for instance, has little use for my knowledge of combat logistics patrols. The same could be said for personnel deployed in CIMIC or PSYOPS. The battlegroup guys can bring a bit back, but even there TTPs change so quickly that relatively little of what they have done can be translated into the basic lessons learned that form the backbone of skills maintenance training at the reserve level. Basic soldier skills always endure, of course, but proficiency in these certainly isn't contingent on a tour in Afghanistan.
From what I've seen, most of the reservists coming back home from Kandahar are being held in VERY high esteem by their units, and those of us who stay in will likely find ourselves elevated above other peers who do not have the overseas experience we have, despite it being largely irrelevant to the level of training we do on a normal basis. All else being equal, reservists who have volunteered to do the real thing for a bit will pretty naturally stand out somewhat from those who have not either by choice or circumstance. The same can probably be said of the regular force.
There is a danger in taking our experiences in Kandahar and trying to extrapolate too much from them. What we learned in Kandahar is relevant to Kandahar. The army, and I think I can safely say that reserve regiments in particular may be at significant risk in trying to task-tailor their training specifically to a contemporary operational environment that may no longer be relevant in just a few more years. We could be largely out of Afghanistan in two years, and potentially committed in strength to some other mission, such as in Africa, within a year or two of that. Much of the specifics of what we've learned will have to be shelved.
I would suggest then that the ultimate value of Afghanistan veterans in the Canadian Forces of the post-Afghanistan near future will not be in specific experiences or lessons learned, but instead will be found in the mindset of those who've operated recently in very fluid, unpredictable tactical and strategic environments. I think that these crappy little insurgencies, brushfire wars and civil conflicts will be prototypical of what we will see for the duration of the careers of anyone who is in now. What we will have as a result of Afghanistan is at least a solid core of rising leadership who have learned the necessity of flexibility of thought and operations, and who have seen the very real application of the 'mission first' mindset that our military has traditionally been known for.
Anyone who has deployed will not likely see their career hurt, but likewise those who have not been to Kandahar will have their own kick at the cat wherever we go next. A few loudmouths might trumpet their Afghanistan experience as the be-all end-all, but the quiet professionals who guide the army will recognize who has
learned from Afghanistan, even if those lessons aren't first hand. The ability to take what has been learned by others and use it to make oneself a better soldier will always be a sure path to career advancement, particularly if you seize the opportunities that inevitably
will present themselves, rather than lamenting those that didn't.
