For much of 2007 and 2008, I was an embedded reporter with a platoon of airborne infantry at a remote outpost called Restrepo, which was attacked up to four times a day. Many soldiers had creases in their uniforms from bullets that had brushed them. In one firefight a bullet hit a sandbag six inches from my head.
Junger's (with co-producer Tim Hetherington) embed resulted in the documentary film Restrepo - the film won the grand jury prize for a domestic documentary at Sundance.
Now, the military has retreated, saying that the valley is too isolated and that the American presence was possibly pushing the locals to side with the Taliban.
...The men at Restrepo seemed to make "sense" of combat in a completely personal way. They were not interested in the rest of the war and they were not much concerned with whether it was just, winnable or even well executed. For soldiers, the fight is what gives a place meaning, rather than the other way around.
In that sense, the Korengal was literally sacred ground... Outpost Restrepo was named after Juan Restrepo, a platoon medic who was killed on July 22, 2007. He was one of the best-liked men in the platoon, and his death was devastating. The men took enormous pride in the outpost they built, and they can now go online and watch videotape of it being blown up by an American demolition team. It is a painful experience for many of them, and in recent days, e-mail messages have flown back and forth as the men have tried to come to terms with it. One man became increasingly overwrought from watching the video over and over again, wondering what all the sacrifice had been for. Another soldier finally intervened. "They might have pulled out but they can't take away what we accomplished and how hard we fought there," he wrote to his distraught comrade. "The base is a base, we all knew it would sooner or later come down. But what Battle Company did there cannot be blown up, ripped down or burned down. Remember that."And if you seem to recall reading something else about the Korengal Valley recently, it could have been this. Staff Sergeant Matthew S. Kinney, United States Army, distinguished himself through exceptionally heroic conduct on 16 October 2008, during a daring Medevac hoist rescue in the forbidding Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. His actions not only reflect the highest credit upon himself and his unit, but saved the lives of eight critically wounded U.S. and Afghan Soldiers and an entire Medevac crew.
There's a video there, too.
And if images of US forces abandoning a valley seem familiar, you may be remembering events in the aftermath of the attack on Keating last Fall. If none of that sounds familiar, or if anything about this story seems shocking, you might want to read this, this, and this, for an intro to events last year (when the decisions were made that you're seeing played out now).
For a too-quick summary, General McChrystal was given a number of troops to accomplish the mission he said he could accomplish with that number of troops. He had proposed bigger things for bigger numbers, too - but that wasn't meant to be. In the end (meaning a decision was made - the troops aren't there yet) and after too much delay for all the wrong reasons - he got a "medium" response. Obviously given more he could have done more, but he got what he got, and certain tasks therefore fall below the red line. Among them, remote spots like Restrepo and Keating. That leaving such locations leads to Taliban propaganda videos is hardly a surprise.
A more recent discussion on that here.
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