Two decades to win the war and our military did little but to repeat endlessly a failed strategy. They also became cheerleaders for staying in Afghanistan forever and adamantly opposed President Trump’s policy of leaving, while not proposing any new strategy to win the war. The war may well have been unwinnable from the start, but the part our upper brass has played in regard to Afghanistan has been contemptible: a policy of stalemate forever.
Thought For the Day
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Pic?
Dunno. The headline performance wasn’t great. Not sure to what one might attribute that. Is disconcerting to read that some of Trump’s abrupt dismissals were consequent to passive-aggressive insubordination.
Note in Viet Nam, Gen. Creighton Abrams made some modifications to the military’s approach to the conflict that bore fruit. South VietNam fell to a conventional invasion that the U.S. Congress fecklessly refused to allow the President to respond. The Viet Cong as a military force had been broken by 1972.
Kurt Schlicter has been making the case that the military’s flag ranks (currently numbering about 530 on active duty) need to be cleaned out tout court, as in retire them all and invite a few back. The behavior of certain officers in the last year give one the idea that he may be right.
On a happier note, there’s been an astonishing improvement in the situation in Iraq. Since 2003, the civilian death toll has averaged about 1,000 a month. It has been running at about 60 a month over the last year. There isn’t an insurgency anymore, just security problems. The violence is of the intensity of Ulster over the period running from 1977-99 (most of the killing occurring in the early years there) or Israel and adjacent territories during the period running from 1987 to 2003. Bad enough, but much better than it was.
True Art, largely an unheralded success.
Frankly, if we aren’t willing to perform long-term occupation, a la Japan after WW2, we should simply go in, blow stuff up, possibly remove the current leadership, and then gtfo. The half-assed invasion (initial, withdrawal, surge, withdrawal, resurge, etc.) we conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan was a waste of lives, time, and money.
Nothing saying we had to stick around for as long as we did with Japan, but we didn’t go in with a long-term plan to begin with. We tried to hand back the reigns way too early.
Frankly, if we aren’t willing to perform long-term occupation, a la Japan after WW2, we should simply go in, blow stuff up, possibly remove the current leadership, and then gtfo. The half-assed invasion (initial, withdrawal, surge, withdrawal, resurge, etc.) we conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan was a waste of lives, time, and money.
The American occupation of Japan concluded in 1952. For another 19 years, we occupied Okinawa. No more than 1% of Japan’s population lived on Okinawa. The U.S. had garrisons in Japan, but they weren’t an occupying force. The median number of troops present at any one time was during the period running from 1952 to 1992 about 62,000. That might have been enough to maintain a hostile occupation of Okinawa and Kyushu if they’d been so arranged. About 90% of Japan’s population lives elsewhere. (The American force in Germany bounced around 240,000 or so, and that might have been sufficient to occupy 3/4 of the western zone therein).
The government made its share of mistakes in Iraq, but I don’t think the term ‘half-assed’ really captures the problem there. Expenditure levels (as a share of domestic product) were of a roughly similar scale to those in Indo-China, but the manpower deployed and the death toll of our own troops and attributable to our troops has been far lower.
It seems that many senior flag officers are more concerned about promotions and lucrative post military retirement positions than the well being of military service member’s as well as advocating that military force is used cautiously and only when beneficial to national interests.
Long repetitive deployments for pointless wars, failed nation building, and now woke lectures, white supremely stand downs and purging of Trump supporters will likely further erode the confidence toward politicians and senior military leadership by those who serve at the “tip of the spear”.
I saw an interesting presentation of the early occupation of Japan. It is on YouTube titled “Douglas MacArthur And Japan – The First Eight Weeks.”
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I am interested in comments about this presentation.
Long repetitive deployments for pointless wars,
(1) That the point doesn’t interest you doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. (2) IIRC, deployments to these zones last about a year. Some people have multiple tours. They’re a lot less lethal than were deployments to Korea and VietNam and the military is all-volunteer. About 2% of our troops are currently posted to the Near East, North Africa, or Central Asia, of whom somewhat north of 1/3 are in Afghanistan.