Three minutes to live, what would you do?

Thinking He Had Three Minutes To Live, This Air Force Sgt. Tried To Change The World:

We can only stand in awe.

When it was all over Gutierrez had taken a bullet to the upper shoulder, triceps, left chest and lateral muscle causing two broken ribs, a broken scapula, and a softball-sized hole in his back.

And he walked out, more than a mile.

Afghanistan is Vietnam redux

Afghanistan is the Vietnam war all over again. How? Michael Yon explains: "Afghanistan Update: Taliban Losing on Battlefield, But Making Progress in Media War."

The more things change, etc.

Groundhog War | Foreign Affairs

Groundhog War | Foreign Affairs:

Bing West assesses the Afghanistan problem to the heart of the matter:

The platoons in Restrepo and Armadillo act as their own tribes, confident in their warrior skills and psychologically distant from their senior leaderships. Since 2001, not one person among the past nine successive U.S. commanding generals in Afghanistan and past two U.S. secretaries of defense has changed the war's five key premises: total domestic control for Afghan officials, billions of dollars for projects to woo the local tribes, a war of attrition to drive back the Taliban, toleration of Pakistan as a sanctuary for the enemy, and a slow buildup of Afghan forces to fight their own war. In essence, politicians and policymakers in Washington have handed the war over to those generals who have embraced nation building as a military mission.

U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to steadily withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and end the U.S. combat mission by 2014. Regardless of how the war turns out, the military lessons learned will be negative; the conflict has dragged on far too long to be considered a strategic success. Unlike in the years after World War II, the generals of this day will not gain in historical stature. The popularity of the idea of counterinsurgency as nation building reached its zenith when Iraq was stabilized in 2008. At the time, the U.S. military's counterinsurgency warriorintellectuals were in vogue. As happened to their predecessors after the Vietnam War, however, their concepts of war fighting will come to be rejected by the younger generation of company-grade officers who had to execute a flawed doctrine. No matter their skills and good intentions, foreign troops cannot persuade the people of another nation to reject insurgents in their midst. The people must convince themselves -- and be willing to sacrifice for that conviction.

After the United States and the United Nations handed full sovereignty to Karzai and his top officials in 2002, the U.S. military could only coax them to pursue, rather than directly institute itself, competent military and civilian leadership in Afghan institutions. Meanwhile, a strategy that rested on persuading the people to turn against the insurgents failed to win the commitment of the tribes. U.S. and NATO soldiers went on patrols until they were shot at and then returned fire discriminately. With Pakistan as their sanctuary, the Taliban controlled the tempo of the war.

Read the whole thing.

Inside Afghanistan’s Deadly Copter War

Inside Afghanistan’s Deadly Copter War | Danger Room | Wired.com:

Chief Warrant Officer John Guffey, one of the former infantryman, remembers the exact moment he decided he would become a pilot. In 2002, he was a passenger in a Chinook transport helicopter that crashed in the Central Valley of Afghanistan, just north of Kandahar. His platoon had taken casualties, and they had been assigned to guard the downed aircraft while waiting for evacuation.

“I’m sitting there, and this Apache [attack helicopter] comes over, and he’s flying real slow,” recalls Guffey. “It’s 120 degrees. My commander walks over and says, ‘I bet you wish you were flying that thing. That’s the only aircraft in the Army inventory that has an air conditioner. It’s probably 70 degrees inside that cockpit.’ I looked up at the Apache pilot and flipped him off … and he puts his arms around himself like he’s cold. Right then, I decided I was gonna be a pilot one day."

Read the whole thing. HT: Blackfive

Navy takes a hard body blow

Story.

I should point out for accuracy's sake that there is no confirmation that the same SEALs who raided bin Laden's compound were aboard this CH-47 when it went down. But the story says that 20 members of Seal Team 6 were killed in the shootdown. The Navy does not release the names of individual members of ST6, and may not even identify these KIA as having been members. A reputable report I saw is that when President Obama asked for the names of the ST6 members who killed bin Laden, he was told (tactfully, of course), "We don't release those names, not even to the Commander in Chief."

One Gurkha. Thirty Taliban. One survivor. Guess who?

Hero Gurkha handed bravery medal by Queen said: 'I thought I was going to die... so I tried to kill as many as I could' | Mail Online

Corporal Dipprasad Pun defeated more than 30 Taliban fighters single-handedly

Used the tripod of his machine gun to beat away a militant after running out of ammunition

A Gurkha soldier who single-handedly defeated more than 30 Taliban fighters has been awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross by the Queen.

Corporal Dipprasad Pun, 31, described how he was spurred on by the belief that he was going to die and so had nothing to lose in taking on the attackers who overran his checkpoint in Afghanistan.

His gallantry award is second only to the Victoria Cross - the highest honour for bravery in the face of the enemy. ...

The soldier fired more than 400 rounds, launched 17 grenades and detonated a mine to thwart the Taliban assault on his checkpoint near Babaji in Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, last September.

At one point, after exhausting all his ammunition, he had to use the tripod of his machine gun to beat away a militant who was climbing the walls of the compound.