• Huge military exercise highlights 'rebalancing of US policy toward Asia'

    Rosie Brown / Yankee-Brown Productions

    A U.S. Navy landing craft arrives at Thailand's Hat Yao beach during Cobra Gold 2013, a military exercise involving 13,000 military personnel.

    By Ed Kiernan, NBC News contributor

    HAT YAO, Thailand -- An ear-thumping explosion reverberates around the bay as a plume of water shoots hundreds of yards into the air.

    Two Marine F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets scream by overhead, while Huey and Super Cobra helicopters bank hard, simulating bombing runs. Heavily armed, amphibious assault vehicles churn up the sand as they unleash hordes of U.S. Marines onto one of Thailand's idyllic eastern beaches.

    Cobra Gold 2013 -- the largest multinational military exercise in the Asia-Pacific region -- is officially under way.

    Rosie Brown / Yankee-Brown Productions

    A Thai marine waits patiently for instructions in the midday sun during Cobra Gold 2013.

    The annual exercise is in its 32nd iteration and involves 13,000 military personnel countries, including Japan and South Korea, as well as observers from China and, for the first time, Myanmar.

    For 10 days, these forces will conduct a variety of field exercises, from amphibious assaults and jungle warfare to humanitarian and civic assistance projects.

    Leading the exercises are more than 1,000 Marines and sailors from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, part of Amphibious Force 7th Fleet.

    Many of these servicemen and women will play a major role in America's new "Asia pivot" defense strategy, which calls for the strengthening of U.S. military power in the region.

    "The pivot to the Pacific that President Obama has talked about is a refocusing of assets and efforts after over 10 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Capt. Cathal O'Connor, commander of Amphibious Squadron 11. "But the actual relationship of being out here in the Pacific goes back to the time of the Civil War."

    Cobra Gold itself is a holdover from the Cold War when it was one of the key pillars of U.S. regional security.

    'A deterrent'
    During the height of the Cold War, the exercise regularly simulated invasions of Thailand from its northern and eastern borders.

    Now with U.S. once again focused on the Pacific, Cobra Gold has taken on renewed significance, explained Jon Grevatt, an Asia-Pacific analyst for IHS Jane's.

    "It has new purpose to show the strength of military collaboration between the U.S. and its partner nations, creating a deterrent to Chinese and North Korean ambitions," he said.

    Tensions have been rising in the region with the dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands – known as Diaoyu in Chinese -- and North Korea's latest nuclear test.

    Rosie Brown / Yankee-Brown Productions

    Plumes of smoke rise from simulated bombing runs over Hat Yao beach in Thailand.

    This strengthening has already begun with the Navy sending a newly upgraded, guided-missile cruiser, USS Antietam, to join the 7th Fleet based in Japan. The Antietam gives the Navy a more sophisticated air-defense system, particularly against ballistic missiles.

    More ships will be arriving in the region in the near future as the Pentagon continues its plan to shift around 60 percent of all Navy warships to the Asia-Pacific theater by 2020.

    And it's not just the Navy getting in on the action, the Marines have deployed two battalions -- nearly 2,000 troops -- to Okinawa in the last six weeks with more scheduled to arrive this summer. There are now more than 17,000 U.S. Marines based in Japan -- the most in over a decade.

    Both Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have visited Southeast Asia in recent months, reinforcing how critical the Asia-Pacific theater has become to U.S. strategy.

    "We all know that the Asia-Pacific is the traffic highway of so many goods and services. A great many things are manufactured in this part of the world," said Rear Adm. Jeffrey A. Harley, commander of Amphibious Force 7th Fleet. "The United States has been a presence in the Pacific for many, many years… and they will continue to be so."

    Sheila A. Smith, an expert on regional security in Asia for the Council on Foreign Relations, said that despite the fact China had accepted an invitation to observe Cobra Gold "military exercises always raise eyebrows."

    “The president is a Pacific president," she said. "I think he realizes that the region has been overlooked. It’s not threat-based or military-driven. The large part is an adjustment of diplomatic focus."

    Rosie Brown / Yankee-Brown Productions

    US Marines assault Hat Yao beach during an exercise as part of Cobra Gold 2013.

    Matt Stumpf, an expert on U.S.-Asian relations at the Asia Society think tank, added: "I think what’s notable about this year’s exercise is in the context of the rebalancing of U.S. policy toward Asia.

    "The president and [former Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton have both spoken in depth on their views that Asia is critical to the United States in the 21st century. And with the drawdown in Afghanistan and the end of the war in Iraq, there was an opportunity in Asia to refocus diplomatic, defense and development tools for U.S. goals in the region."

    NBC News Staff Writer John Newland contributed to this report.

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  • Aftermath of Afghan massacre: Having the courage to ask for help

    courtesy Ed Kiernan

    Ed Kiernan pictured while he was serving with the military in Forward Operating Base (FOB) Summerall outside Bayji, Iraq, in early 2007.

    By Ed Kiernan, NBC News, London

    NEWS ANALYSIS

    "What is the purpose of the bayonet?
    To kill, kill, kill with the cold blue steel!
    What makes the green grass grow?
    Blood, blood, bright red blood!"

    It’s a beautiful summer morning at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., in 2003, and I’m screaming at the top of my lungs while stabbing a tire with a seven-inch bayonet.  Around me more than 200 other men and women are doing the same thing.

    Bayonet training 101 -- just another way the U.S. Army teaches you how to kill.

    Killing is what soldiers are trained to do.  And while nothing can excuse the actions that Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is accused of committing in Afghanistan, anyone who thinks the Army doesn’t dehumanize you and others is kidding themselves. 

    I’ve never met Bales, but we both enlisted in the Army in November, 2001. While he must have gone straight into basic training, I had 18 months of college to finish after joining up. 

    By the time I’d graduated and finished my training as a combat medic, Bales was well into his first tour in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade in the Second Infantry Division.

    Contrary to reports from villagers where the massacre took place, U.S. military officials say there is no evidence of an IED attack on Americans around the time of the shooting that killed 16 Afghan civilians. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.

    In the summer of 2006, he was sent to Iraq again, this time to Mosul.  At the same time, I was deployed a little further south near the city of Bayji as part of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne.

    When I arrived in the Middle East I believed that I would be able to show the Iraqis that we were there to help, not harm, them.  That attitude lasted until someone I knew was killed. Then I felt – ‘the hell with these people, kill them all.’ 

    Those feelings passed, but the anger never went away entirely.  It’s hard to reconcile the thought that the people you are trying to help may be the same ones out to kill you and your friends.  There were no uniforms in Iraq, no way to tell friend from enemy until the bombs went off.

    How Staff Sgt. Bales' lawyers are fighting for his life

    Courage to ask for help
    Several months into our deployment a staff sergeant from the infantry platoon I was assigned to visited me. It was his third deployment, he was anxious, flashbacks made it hard to sleep and things were pretty tough back home. My four months of medical training didn’t cover much psychology but luckily we had a Combat Stress unit on our base. Well, I say unit -- in fact it was one major tucked away in a room on the far side of the base.

    courtesy Ed Kiernan

    Ed Kiernan, third from right, watches as the battalion's surgeon treats a sick Iraqi in Forward Operating Base (FOB) Summerall outside Bayji, Iraq, in the summer of 2007.

    The staff sergeant agreed to speak to the major but didn’t want anyone else in the platoon to know. So I lied and said I was taking him to the aid station for back pain instead.

    No matter what they say, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is looked down on in the Army. Soldiers still see it as a sign of weakness. I should know -- I had to give PowerPoint briefings about it while guys joked that it could never happen to them.

    But PTSD does happen, and it eventually forced my staff sergeant off the front lines. It was one too many explosions, one too many bodies, and one too many friends gone.

    His departure was huge loss to the platoon, but it was the right decision. It took an enormous amount of strength for that staff sergeant to reach out and ask for help. Not everyone supported the decision, and there were many who thought his stepping aside was quitting or worse – cowardly.

    Unlike Bales, I never had to experience multiple deployments.  One 15-month tour in Iraq was enough for me. 

    I now know that it takes enormous courage to make it through three deployments. If Bales was indeed behind the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians, what would have happened if he had shown enough courage to ask for help before it was too late?