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Mullen Visits Strykers in Afghanistan

Dec-18-2009 » Filed Under: 5/2 SBCT

Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, recently paid a visit to some Stryker soldiers in Afghanistan.

"We can tactically win," the admiral said. "But if we're killing local civilians we're going to strategically lose."

He didn't have to argue the point. There were nods in the crowd. A Stryker Company he was speaking to had taken more casualties than any unit since 9/11 when kicking this new strategy into high gear – 21 KIA so far, one of the largest losses borne by a single unit in this entire war.

But the Stryker guys had been through this before. One told us how they'd been at the frontline of counterinsurgency in Iraq, and they'd seen it turn things around after initially being skeptical the plan would work.

"We've closed the gap on human intel," Lt. Col. Jonathan Neumann told us, ticking off what he saw as gains tallied against soldiers lost. He told a ragged group of reporters traveling with chairman Mullen that the intel from Afghans, which started flowing once locals were convinced the Americans would stay, meant his guys had been able to sweep up caches of weapons and stockpiles of explosives at a record rate.


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