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Mission 22 -Tactical Considerations
Dai Chopan: The Taliban Trap

The Marines are basically a combat patrol so they’ll travel in a specific pattern through ambush territory. The different formations they may employ are subject to factors like visibility and the terrain they’re traveling through. The movement to contact is deliberate. The Marines are pushing ahead, keeping the lanes of fire open with their weapons at the ready. As an offensive posture, they’ve got pre-determined map coordinates and probably pre-registered fire. They’ll encounter checkpoints and call them in. They don’t need grids or radio transmission when they’re fired upon. They’ll just say something like, “fire Foxtrot,” and the supporting fire will come in on the pre registration. This enables small unit leaders to call in supporting fire quickly.

The Marines put this plan into effect as soon as they were engaged. They hear gunshots and boom. The 22nd MEU is given different rules of engagement because they are operating in the open, against known enemy positions. It’s all about the movement to contact and raids and assaults. It’s what we used to call “search and destroy.” Quite literally, these guys are out looking for a fight. The Marines will walk around with their rifle on their shoulder looking through the rifle site so anything they see is a target. They 'Close with and Destroy the Enemy' which is the basic fire team mission. That’s the basic instruction since boot camp, and it’s effective. The Marines in Afghanistan are almost routinely wiping these guys out.

In the Dai Chopan mission, the Marines took fire, called in their backup, and scattered the ambush. Twenty-one insurgents were accounted for, but understand the casualty number was probably much higher. You have unarmored troops here. In Civil War times, you would have had 2 out of 3 fatalities in an engagement. During World War II, that figure changed to 50 percent, and by Korea, it was 1/3. If we picked up 21 bodies on site, my guess is that at least that many more died in the engagement. I am assuming that the Afghanis probably lost many more of the 'walking wounded' that left the area due to a lack of technology and medical resources.

The Taliban and al Qaeda mindset is one we have trouble connecting with. These groups are comprised of people who put their personal failures off on a system. It’s always someone else’s fault. That’s a gang mentality, a Nazi mindset. There’s also a political theory in the works that’s as old as fascism. The insurgents represent a public will behind a strong leader—the leader being radical Islam. They believe that democracy is inherently weak, and if you challenge the US, the US will back down. The insurgents think if they oppress our democracy, we’ll lose our resolve. If they bloody us a little, we’ll leave like we did during the Beirut bombing and the Black Hawk Down incidents. But they won’t succeed that way here in Afghanistan. Sure, in a way they’re right. Pure terror does get a response from us. We turn loose the dogs.

From an interview with US Army Staff Sgt. Dan Snyder