On Allies

You Get Who Is Available

Howdy,

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Let’s talk allies.

Nearly everyone in the “elite media” hates Benjamin Netanyahu. Even some of Israel’s strongest supporters often concede that they don’t like Netanyahu, wishing upon a star that Israel would somehow defenestrate their prickly ally.

I find this to be downright odd. I’ve allied with some real sons of bitches. In Iraq, most of my Iraqi partners were trying to kill me, at least during the Summer of Love that was Baghdad in 2006. There were a few solid Iraqi Police commanders, but those SOBs didn’t last long. They were forced to choose sides: Jayh al-Mahdi or Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)/Sunni insurgent forces. I didn’t blame them, per se; I realized they were caught in the crosshairs. I didn’t exactly tell them my deepest and darkest secrets, but I also didn’t bad-mouth them in front of other people.

When I complained to my commander, he always quipped, “You don’t order your allies at the store, Will. You get who is available in the area.”

He was right. I was stuck with them, warts and all. Perhaps the US should never have placed us in a position to advise insurgent forces, but they did. So, I made the best of it. I worked with my sources, and we tried to find the IP worth salvaging while keeping a watchful eye on the rest.

Even though many of the IPs slaughtered innocent people regularly, many of them were fun to smoke and joke with. Most people would find this difficult, but I was always good at compartmentalizing, so looking past people’s flaws came pretty naturally to me.

During my second deployment to Iraq in 2010, nearly all of the Sons of Iraq leaders I worked with were former Sunni insurgents who killed scores of American soldiers. However, they had “flipped” and joined TEAM AMERICA, so I looked past their abysmal human rights records.

What were my other choices? Not working with partnered forces because their human rights records were abysmal? Report every instance of abuse? Report them for corruption? If I had done that, that’s all I would do: fill out paperwork that would’ve done nothing for my relationship or our common goals. Everyone knew that the Iraqi Security Forces were filled with former murderers, rapists, and killers.

But, at the end of the day, “You don’t order your allies at the store.”

In Afghanistan, I worked with a wide array of allies. Some were warriors, like the late great General Raziq; others, like my former District Governor, Daru, were former mid-level Taliban commanders with American blood on their hands. Regardless of who it was and their background, I found a way to work with them.

And it wasn’t just that they had killed Americans. Some of them routinely had sex with little boys, something called Bacha Bazi. These boys were often made to wear girl’s dresses and dance for parties for men, who later sexually assaulted them.

According to the DoD, we were supposed to report such abuses. I will tell you that I never met anyone who did. Perhaps this happened routinely, but I doubt it.

Bacha Bazi was so prevalent among influential Pashtun leaders in southern and eastern Afghanistan that reporting them for such abuses would’ve left us without any allies and undercutting the ones foolish enough to fight alongside us.

How about men who torture? I partnered alongside hundreds of Afghan and Iraqi commanders who understood that word differently than we did. One IP commander was notorious for sodomizing his inmates to make them talk. Afghan Local Police leaders routinely placed Taliban fighters in cages in the hot sun without water, hoping to make them talk. I could go on about this little topic for thousands of words, but after fighting alongside indigenous forces for nearly five years, I found such abuses to be commonplace.

Maybe I should’ve reported all of these people?

But I never saw the point. It would never change their behavior. It might make it worse. So, I worked with the allies I had available in the area.

It would be beneficial for the American people to remember this as we do our little dance with the Axis of Resistance: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea (I would add Pakistan to that little Axis, but that’s just me).

We’ve spent the last few years denigrating our allies before the world. We blamed the Afghans for losing a war, even though we retreated from the battlefirst. We blamed the Ukrainians for not making more substantial gains during their counteroffensive, even though we continue to constrict their engagement and supply lines rules. Now, we blame Netanyahu for failing to prevent the World Central Kitchen strike, even though our final drone strike in America’s lost war in Afghanistan killed ten innocent people.

You may not like some of our allies, and I understand that. I get it. I do, indeed.

But at the end of the day, you don’t order your allies at a store. You get who is available in the area.

Until Next Time.