Bob Hebert’s column from today is a must read. And it’s depressing as hell.
“The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we’ve been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military. . . .
Watch out Barack, this could be you
“There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It’s just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year. The 18-year-olds fighting (and, increasingly, dying) in Afghanistan now were just 9 or 10 when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001. . . .
“Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.’s have now lost their lives. If we don’t have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we’re unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we’re not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it.”
He hits on the exact points where we are so misguided with this war – all these wars. He hits with a damn sledgehammer, and still very few of us will look up from the Sunday crossword tomorrow to notice.
One does not stand still looking for a path. One walks; and as one walks, a path comes into being. – Mas Kodani
I believe the first couple of sentences of the third chapter of Sun Zi’s The Art of War is a perfect summation for what went wrong:
(my translation)
If the Iraqi Army had been kept intact, the occupation and transfer of power would have been short and efficient. There was never any possibility for that in Afghanistan. There existed no chance since I was a toddler. An army can never win a war when nothing exists that can surrender. In the case of Afghanistan, any warlords who submit merely lose esteem among their competitors. This lesson was learned by the Soviet Union long ago; certain parties in the Bush administration simply chose to ignore it in the interests of their investors.
I agree with every word you’ve written; we indeed lost the Iraqi people the day the army was disbanded. And those we didn’t lose at that point, we lost with the de-Bathification. We threw out everyone in Iraq who knew how to run the coountry. Such a tragedy. Such a crime.
And AFghanistan? We never seem to learn that an army is powerless in the face of guerillas or insurgency. It’s as if they were attending different wars altogether!
Great post Moe. Why do they ask average Americans to sacrifice but they don’t ask the war profiteers to do the same?
Where do they get these people to keep joining our military? Our “leaders” wrap themselves in the American flag yet never carry an M-16 on foreign soil themselves. Why would ANYONE want to serve?
I hear half the guys signing up thsese day do it for the paycheck.
Old men always send young men to die in thier wars.
In Vietnam, we had a draft, so half the army eventually hated the war and didn’t want to be there. But if they didn’t go, it was jail.
Different world with all volunteer.
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