Pat Proctor's latest "Special Report from Afghanistan" available at ArmchairGeneral.com

The next installment in Pat Proctor's series, "Special Report from Afghanistan," called "The Frontier of Freedom," is up at ArmchairGeneral.com. To see the article, click here. Here is an excerpt:

The Red Warriors are giving the insurgents as good as they get. Every week they add to the long list of insurgents killed or captured in northern Kunar. Yet, Lt. Col. Scott Green, the Red Warrior’s commander, would be the first to say that this isn’t enough. With an endless supply of young men from madrasas in Pakistan and the U.S. set to leave at the end of 2014, his most important job is not killing insurgents, but preparing the Afghans to continue the fight without him.

Pat Proctor has been deployed to eastern Afghanistan with the US 1st Infantry Division since April 2012. Before he left, he agreed to write a series of articles for Armchair General magazine. You can see other articles in this series here.

Pat Proctor's Newest "Report from Afghanistan" up at ArmchairGeneral.com

ArmchairGeneral.com has just posted another article by Pat Proctor, "Report from Afghanistan: A Turning Tide?" To see the article, click here. Here is an excerpt:


In Nerkh, as in the rugged northeastern reaches of Kunar and Nuristan and the arid plains of northeast Ghazni, Hezb-i-Islami is walking a precarious tightrope, declaring opposition to the Taliban where it has worn out its welcome, ambivalence to an Afghan government with tentative public support, and public hostility but private détente with coalition forces. If they can bring along those Afghans loyal to Hezb-i-Islami through thirty years of association with their tamim, this might just be the beginning of a turning tide in the decade long war in Afghanistan.

Pat Proctor has been deployed to eastern Afghanistan with the US 1st Infantry Division since April 2012. Before he left, he agreed to write a series of articles for Armchair General magazine.  You can see other articles in this series here.

The Journal of Strategic Security has just published an article by author Pat Proctor, "War without Violence: Leveraging the Arab Spring to Win the War on Terrorism."

"After a decade of war, the United States has failed to eradicate the threat of salafist jihadism. No matter how hard it tries, the United States cannot kill its way to victory in the war on terrorism. Sweeping changes across the Middle East—dubbed the "Arab Spring" by the media—have presented the West with a unique opportunity to pursue an alternative approach. Rather than engaging in war (politics through violence), the United States should engage in mass politics (war without violence) to compel the Arab world to reject the salafist jihadism idea."

To read the entire article, click here.

Read Pat Proctor's "Report from Afghanistan"

Author Pat Proctor just posted a new article at ArmchairGeneral.com. The article, titled "Report From Afghanistan, Part One: One Enemy, Many Faces," is the first in a series of reports he will write while deployed to Afghanistan. It discusses the many different insurgent groups contending against coalition forces, the Afghan government, and even one another.

To read the article, click here.

Pat Proctor deploys to Afghanistan

Pat will deploy this week with the 1st Infantry Division (the storied "Big Red One"). The division will assume responsibility for eastern Afghanistan during this critical period in America's decade long war. See the full story at FoxNews.com. An excerpt...

“The headquarters spent a year in southern Iraq, returning to Fort Riley in January 2011, but has never deployed to Afghanistan. ‘We had to wrap our heads around a different country, a different people,’ said Lt. Col. Patrick Proctor, the division's chief of plans. As part of that effort, key officers on the division headquarters staff visited Afghanistan in September, October and December to be briefed by U.S. and Afghan officers and get a better lay of the land. Proctor and [division commander, Major General] Mayville made a final visit last week.”

To read more about the deployment, see the 1st Infantry Division Post, 16 March 2012.

To post a message for Pat as he leaves and keep up with the latest developments in eastern Afghanistan, go to Pat's FaceBook page.

Also check out Armchair General magazine beginning in May 2012. Pat will be writing a series of “Dispatches from the Front” over the course of his deployment.

Military Times Review of "Task Force Patriot"

J. Ford Huffman, a staff writer for Military Times, has written a review of Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq. Here's an excerpt...

“In his detailed narrative, Proctor, an Army lieutenant colonel, is not afraid to admit a 'fatal assumption' or a 'serious flaw' that leads to his unit’s realization that 'it was time to start from scratch,' again and again. Frustrations with local politicians, State Department representatives and local business practices get in the Army’s way, but the officer is persuasive.”

To read the entire review, click here.

Task Force Patriot is published by Government Institutes Press, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. The book is now available in stores, or you can order it on Amazon.com or at Barnes & Noble.

"Ten Years of GWOT" published at Journal of Strategic Security

The Journal of Strategic Security, a publication of Henley-Putnam University, has published an article by Pat Proctor and colleague Dave Oakley, called "Ten Years of GWOT, the Failure of Democratization and the Fallacy of 'Ungoverned Spaces'."  From the abstract:

"October 7, 2011, marked a decade since the United States invaded Afghanistan and initiated the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). While most ten-year anniversary gifts involve aluminum, tin, or diamonds, the greatest gift U.S. policymakers can present American citizens is a reconsideration of the logic that guides America's counterterrorism strategy. Although the United States has successfully averted large-scale domestic terrorist attacks, its inability to grasp the nature of the enemy has cost it dearly in wasted resources and, more importantly, lost lives. Two of the most consistent and glaring policy flaws revolve around the concepts of filling "ungoverned spaces" and installing democracy by force."

To read the article, click here.