via US News.
It's about the history of the war stupid!
Gates remembers Vietnam. He knows how views change and how heroes today can be transformed into villains tomorrow. Gates knows that historians will not be kind to those who had their hands on the controls of the fiasco that is Iraq and Afghanistan.
He's simply getting his side of the story out first.
What should really be interesting is when the General's club finally wakes up to the fact that they're on the hook for much of the blame too. When that happens expect some serious tell-alls from the military side of the house.
That's when this will get fun.
"[Obama] didn't believe in his own strategy, and doesn't consider the war to be his," Gates writes in the book. "For him, it's all about getting out."Everyone is so focused on the politics of this thing that they can't see what the Gates book is really all about.
It's about the history of the war stupid!
Gates remembers Vietnam. He knows how views change and how heroes today can be transformed into villains tomorrow. Gates knows that historians will not be kind to those who had their hands on the controls of the fiasco that is Iraq and Afghanistan.
He's simply getting his side of the story out first.
What should really be interesting is when the General's club finally wakes up to the fact that they're on the hook for much of the blame too. When that happens expect some serious tell-alls from the military side of the house.
That's when this will get fun.
Sadly Solomon is right, and you could almost write the stories today... All you need to have is the names to go with - who, will say what... when that time comes.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that we have wars with no clear cut goals that last forever because we do not have the will to defeat - the enemy - or simply don't identify the enemy - so we do not know who we are fighting until they shoot us.
War is supposed to be all about killing people and destroying the enemy. If you're not prepared to do that you shouldn't be engaging in a war. And IF YOU DO... then collateral damage (civilians) needs to be considered acceptable!
Hops off her soapbox.
Killing and destruction are at best incidental to war, not the purpose of it. We tried to reduce it into a mathematical proof and quantify it except instead of kills on a DICH board a la Vietnam, we have drone strikes, raids, POIs captured, etc..
ReplyDeleteWe also have not learned the principle of economy of force. We never had the numbers required for occupation/nation building/counterinsurgency and sought to fight wars on the cheap.
Gates seems to be aware of the potential danger of our debacles being declared as victories 20 years after the fact.
Congress... in yielding the power to declare war to the executive branch via the War Powers Act has placed our country in a position it was never intended to be in. As Paralus says... "sought to fight wars on the cheap"
ReplyDeleteIt should come as no surprise that our nation has never fought a war with full conviction ever since we changed the ground-rules for how we get involved in them in the first place. All the thoughts (points) the Paralus made in his second paragraph were bandied about by various politicians at various times --- but nothing definitive was ever decided.
When it gets to the point that we no longer know why we're in a war as a unified people, we've lost that war.
The war powers act gives credibility to our military alliances and prevents enemy attack. If you remember, we waited a year to invade Iraq there was continuous debate and the polls consistently show a 53-57% vote for war.
ReplyDeleteBlame for the war on terrorism, lol oh,well. Could you plan a better counterattack to 9/11 with the available resources and support? We have created friendly states that will feed us the information about the terrorists. The information is coming from multiple sources. This helps us prevent further attack. The total cost of both wars was less than the price of the stock market crash after 9/11. The casualties may be smaller than the continued attacks that would have resulted from doing nothing. Not to mention that we killed a lot of dirtbags that hated us until the bombs fell.
And screw the half a million civilians who lost their lives, for no reason? Don't they count as casualties?
DeleteCounterattack to 9/11? Iraq had jack shit to do with 9/11 so our attack upon it was to place the US astride the largest known petroleum reserves in the world, not to punish or counterattack anyone. That's almost as bogus as when Wolfowitz and the rest of the neo-cons claimed Iraqi oil would pay for the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq.
DeleteWe've created dubiously friendly states? Karzai is essentially the mayor of Kabul because the Afghan gov't controls little hisn't backed up by ISAF and US troops. Iraq? Iraq is working closer with Iran than ever and is closer to Syrian than it is the US. Sure, we'll sell them F-16s and Abram tanks, but to count upon them as an ally is folly.
A better counter attack? How about we sock 500 billion into an electrical grid that runs on natural gas and can power tens of millions of electric hybrid vehicles, stimulating our economy and impoverishing all of those sheikhs of Araby and start reforming a military that wasn't run down and overextended chasing guys in robes and sandals?
I don't doubt the bravery of those who served, but I do question the wisdom of those who sent them into harm's way and expect better from these so-called leaders. We've done little more than expended treasure and blood in the grand strategy version of the Charge of the Light Brigade. Now we're broke, bloodied and about to cashier tens of thousands of combat vets to pay for new toys that are ill-suited for the challenges that face the nation.
/rant off
Agrees.
DeleteI would add :
-History will remember that USA had no worry about ONU for Irak
-All people that decided the Irak war became very rich, and some of them bought house in argentina like Dick Cheney ( the paradise of Humanity & War Criminal )
-Complot theory of 9/11 would perhaps reveal true in future, like Pearl Harbour and JFK assination seems to reveal themselves true nowadays...
EVERY country has hided skeleton, sometimes very fresh, like our Lybia's one...
I expect the generals will let the civilians take the fall. They will play dumb -- not a difficult task for them
ReplyDeleteGeneral Odierno:
" The bottom line is, we raise our right hand in order to defend the Constitution of the United States. And when we do that, we are prepared to go forward and do what is necessary as we’re asked to do by our civilian leadership in order to provide security for this nation. . . . We raised our right hand, we did and our job."
And the grunts? They asked for it, according to Odierno:
"But the bottom line, what I do know, in each and every one of those cases, they raised and volunteered to be in the military because they were proud to be part of the Army. . . Many of them died doing the things that they wanted to do."
http://swampland.time.com/2014/01/08/6-reasons-why-u-s-troop-deaths-in-iraq-were-worth-it/
I watched a Brother, a son and two nephews fly off to fight these wars in the middle east and Afganhistan I thankfully saw them all come home alive and not maimed or traumatized, I saw a Cousin come home in a box from Iraq.
ReplyDeleteAll with the foreboding of a Vietnam era and westpac deployment veteran and the memories of that war which due to a lack of will the US sailed away from. leaving 2,000 MIA's and POW's behind.
I had hope this war would be different but knowing the worthless politician's the low info voter's elect into office I had my doubts. Which were more evident each day. Not being able to even name the enemy or declare them as such sealed my doubts.
Does anyone here expect a future war with Korea or China will be any different?
The only way we can win is if the un-named enemies bomb our feckless leaders and make them as much in danger as the troops they send into these clusterphucs. I bet when D. C. gets nuked and the senate, congress and the white house get to see some real shit those idiots will take war a bit more seriously. If not then they will be dead and we can find some real leaders to lead us.
That young Sgt of paratroops though, what kind of lesson did this Obama snatch of defeat from the jaws of victory for political reason send her?
The same damn lesson I learned 42long years ago.
Never trust a political phuc in Washington D. C. they will screw the pooch and kill our kids every single time and have been since 1953 in Korea.
Don't get fooled again.