LOST MILLIONS: Understanding KDF LOOTING, Karangi-Lenku Failure at Westgate through the eyes of an American Soldier

By Dikembe Disembe

Ole Lenku shot to fame and public consternation when President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed him in the former digital cabinet. From the onset, let’s just agree there is nothing fundamentally different – in modus operandi – between this cabinet and what we have seen in the past. In the fullness of time; the ‘bloated’ Grand coalition cabinet which brought back Kenya to the long road of normalcy, peace and contemptuous calm (reconciliation) and progress after 2007 will be vindicated.

The former digital cabinet of young and exceptional Kenyans who were paraded at State House in Whitehouse style media stunts ceased to exist even before it started operations. From one national challenge to another, Uhuru’s much hyped technocrats have used the most backward reasoning and assumptions to solve Kenya’s challenges that save for a rudderless opposition and ethnicity, a revolution of Egyptian magnitude would long have descended on Nairobi.

Donald Rumsfed, United States Secretary of Defense is immortalized in the history of military communication as the man who told the media something about nothing, and got away with it. His protégé, our own Lenku, after westgate, has tried to emulate the vagueness with little success here and massive failures there.

In responding to a question by a journalist over the absence of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction, and without which the Iraqi invasion was and still remains an illegitimate, unjust war.

Ramsfeld responded,

“There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things we now know that we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know”.

Lost in the patriotic frenzy of the aftermath of Westgate are these nagging questions: what are the known knowns,  known unknowns and the unknown unknowns of the Westgate incident? Who are to supply all these information to the public?

Unlike Rumsfeld, whom an in-depth understanding of the language allowed him to openly hide a lot, with much praise from linguists (when charged with abuse of ‘plain English, Geoffrey Pullum, a linguist, would sensationally come to the his defense, saying the response was ‘completely straightforward’ and ‘impeccable; syntactically, semantically, logically and rhetorically’), Lenku’s month-long media exposure has never produced a zinger for some Wikipedia entry. Meaning, when all is over, he will be forgotten by future history as the man who had a chance to say nothing on something but shot himself in the mouth severally that no coherent anecdote remained for posterity. Today, Lenku was just a footnote!

Westgate through the eyes of an American soldier is an interesting reading in military paradoxes and similarities. Often, most operations do not go according to strategic planning as earlier adopted. War evolves in the battlefield. War has no fixed exit strategy. Military blunders are as epic as military successes. Interestingly, because we are used to hollow praise and shallow spasms of hero worshiping, Westgate could only suffer similar tragedy: we so needed heroes, and in Nakumatt, ‘we got them!

Shelton Hugh (forgive me for using American characters to explain Chinese-like war operations) was the 14TH chairman of the American Joint Chief of Staff and worked under the civilian Rumsfeld.  In his autobiography, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of  An American Warrior, the career soldier depicts a scene during his active duty the Vietnam war involving a young lieutenant named Ken Lorbin.

Here is the short scene:

When I got to Lorbin’s platoon, I moved in his direction and looked him straight in the eye. “Right in the middle of your area of operation there is a school house, and there is excellent chance that that schoolhouse is bobby trapped. In fact the only reason you are here is because your predecessor was leading a patrol in that area and he wandered too close to the entrance and triggered the trap. It killed him and wounded six others. You would stay away from that school. You got that straight, Lieutenant?” I asked.

“Roger, sir. Understand” he nodded.

“Just stay the hell away from there.” I repeated. “It’s just bait for these guys.”

The operation kicked off and not two hours later I got an emergency call from a medevac. It was Lorbin. “Where are you?” I asked.

“At the school,” he answered. “And besides me, I’ve got five others seriously injured.”

“You stupid son of a bitch!” I shouted into the handset, completely loosing it. “I’m going to see your ass court-martialled.”

The captain continues his botched narration about an operation gone awry. Even more egregious, Lt. Lorbin did not drop the single platoon radio the team was using. He was evacuated to Japan with it!

“Uh, sir, do you copy?” I heard Lorbin whine over the radio.

“You damn well be using that chiopper’s radio,” I screamed, searching in vain for the radio unit that Lorbin was supposed to have left behind.

“No sir, that’s another problem. Took off with it by mistake. In one of the all time world class examples of supreme stupidity, he flew off with our radio, leaving the entire platoon without one.

I decided to share with you this interesting read from a page in that autobiography to make you appreciate the conditions of military operations. Often, shit happens at the battlefront. Westgate was no different. It is for this matter that Kenyans are irked at the deliberate attempt to hide culpability by defense honchos over the possible looting which occurred at Westgate.

William Ruto, the Deputy President, realizing this age-old phenomenon, somehow appreciated possible lapses by the security organs – especially the defense forces. The problem with Gen Karangi, IG Kimaiyo and those deny-for-ever security officials at Department of Defense (DoD) is their penchant for lies and hero-worshipping. Here is a military top-brass that would rather want people to believe the armed personnel walking with white Nakumat plastic bags were zombies or aliens from Mars and not Lieutenant Lorbins of Kenya.

Reading further Gen (Ret.) Shelton’s memoir, he and the direct commander of Lorbin’s platoon did process court-martial papers for effective discipline of the soldier. It would take him 20 years to learn that the soldier was never dismissed from the military altogether, but redeployed to arrange files at the Pentagon!

You see, that is how red tape ought to work. People must be held accountable. While doing so, it must be clear to everyone that something is being done. How, tell me, will the defense forces court-martial the KDF looters when their top commanders had denied any illegality on their performance?

The difference, and this is what we as a country must perfect, is that while military mistakes happen the world over, even in among best and most disciplined forces, these mistakes get corrected differently. In our case, we seem to be content in hiding and passing the buck and blaming the media.

In America, lieutenants, generals, colonels and platoon commanders get fired and demoted. Soldiers are court-martialled and army chiefs, when they retire, write books about such experiences.

“There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things we now know that we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know”.

In the end, a society learns from the mistakes of their forbearers.

Dikembe Disembe comments on topical social-cultural and political events facing Kenya.