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| -Great Cultural Revolution |
| America's Generals Lied, Lost Wars, And Looted The People They Claimed To Serve |
| 2021-08-07 |
| [Federalist] Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in June that he wanted to understand "white rage," why "thousands of people" tried "to assault this building and ... overturn the Constitution of the United States of America." If Milley really wants to understand the "rage" of the American people he should start by asking why he and his fellow generals can’t win any wars. As a Marine Corps officer who served at the tail end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I saw firsthand the rapid ideological transformation pervading the military in the wake of these disasters in the Middle East. Unable to win wars overseas, the military’s leaders went "woke." Currying ideological favor is easier than trying to end insurgencies. It is also necessary if military leaders want to keep the gravy train of taxpayer funding. Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy and his devastating critique of George Bush and Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2016 election put the military-industrial complex on high alert. Trump was pushing the American right-wing away from the expensive and unending foreign interventions the military-industrial complex needed in order to justify its existence. For too long, America’s generals have relied on a "stab in the back" thesis to justify their failure on the battlefield. The narrative set in after Vietnam and has calcified today. Former national security adviser and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster tweeted on July 8 in regards to the sweeping march of the Taliban that the "US media is finally reporting on the transformation of Afghanistan after their disinterest and defeatism helped set conditions for capitulation and a humanitarian catastrophe." McMaster’s attempt to deflect blame for military failure on an insufficiently obsequious media is unacceptable. He and his fellow generals knew full well that Afghanistan was unstable and that our strategy wasn’t working. Instead of speaking up, they lied to the public and then jumped into the private sector to reap the reward of misbegotten trust. Milley and his fellow generals deserve, richly, to feel the full weight of the American people’s anger. For 20 years, these leaders lied consistently to the American people and their political masters about the wars in the Middle East. In December 2019, Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post published a devastating series of articles on America’s failure in Afghanistan. Using 600 "lessons learned" interviews with top military staff and diplomatic personnel collected by the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Whitlock illustrated just how pervasive the gut rot in America’s military really was. |
| Posted by:M. Murcek |
| #15 Whusons Joluter4785, Even the competent ones like Mathias kept the gravy train rolling as far as I could tell. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2021-08-07 17:16 |
| #14 BTW the warfighting has never been the problem. The stupid focus has always been "Nation Building". |
| Posted by: 3dc 2021-08-07 16:57 |
| #13 Procopius2k is correct about Pakistain |
| Posted by: 3dc 2021-08-07 16:55 |
| #12 Benito Mussolini said that when given a choice between competent and incompetent generals he always chose the incompetent one. he said the incompetent general would know he was incompetent and be dependent on Mussolini for support. Bill Clinton was the first U.S. president who used that same strategy. He is reported as having said he chose Gen. Shalikashvili for chairman JCS precisely because he was incompetent and would be more pliable as a result. Obama and Biden have done the same thing. There is an article about the number of generals and admirals force to resign by Obama (usually for sexual misconduct). The number of Admirals is truly astounding. |
| Posted by: Whusons Joluter4785 2021-08-07 15:06 |
| #11 And we never went north of the DMZ except with airstrikes |
| Posted by: Blackjack 2021-08-07 12:30 |
| #10 To me the emblem of our later years in Afghanistan was COP Keating, which was the subject of the movie "The Outpost" and a couple of books ("Red Platoon", etc.) There was high ground and low ground. We built the outpost on the low ground so we could help the Afghan villagers (half of whom were Taliban and the other half grifters.) But giving up the high ground was militarily nuts, and the Taliban eventually used the high ground to launch an attack that came within a hair of wiping out the outpost, and failed only because of the extreme heroism of individual American soldiers and US airpower. If we had to be in that part of Afghanistan for some reason I can't see, an alternative strategy would have been to occupy the high ground and build a pyramid of skulls on the low ground. The locals would have understood that. |
| Posted by: Matt 2021-08-07 12:16 |
| #9 ...or driver? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2021-08-07 12:05 |
| #8 It's easy to lie to people when all you have time to pay attention to is your own individual career, rivals and maybe the occasional female biographer. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2021-08-07 12:01 |
| #7 Trying to make 21st century democrats out of Democrats is light-years out of reach too. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2021-08-07 11:55 |
| #6 #1 FTW. Also, trying to make 21st century democrats out of a 7th century civilization is a bridge too far. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2021-08-07 11:49 |
| #5 It's easy to lie to people if you keep them too busy with frivolous issues to imbibe the lessons of history and possess a fair knowledge of the world. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2021-08-07 11:19 |
| #4 Ike warned about all this years ago. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2021-08-07 10:55 |
| #3 Jan 30, 2021 — SIGAR issued five financial-audit reports of U.S.-funded projects to rebuild. Afghanistan that identified $26,993,829 in questioned costs... A drop in the bucket. |
| Posted by: Gerthudion Whomoper3485 2021-08-07 08:37 |
| #2 /\ Remember where OBL was found and killed. He was purchased from the Paks. He'd been riding the bench for years. Possibly a minor point at this late date. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2021-08-07 08:06 |
| #1 You were never going to 'win' as long as the Taliban operated out of Pakistan. If you were not going to make Pakistan a parking lot there was no 'win'. Remember where OBL was found and killed. [which like when the 'Wall' came down was the proper signal to pull the hell out of the place] |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2021-08-07 08:02 |