A Loser's War

In God We Trust

A Loser’s Road

By Maj. General Jerry R. Curry, USA (ret'd)
CurryforAmerica.com

President Obama never praises America’s military for their favorable actions in Iraq, a war he calls misguided and ill conceived. But he refers to the war in Afghanistan as the right choice and a “just” war.

What he and his advisors are in the process of learning is that there is no such thing as a “just” war. War is simply war – brutal, inhuman, violent and destructive. Only the victors in war can afterward justify their actions. Obama has assumed ownership of the Afghan war and if he wants to portray his choice of wars as justifiable, he had better find a quick way to win “his” war.

The Afghans are not interested in winning his war for him. They only want to go on living under one dictatorship or another just as they have always lived, and to continue cultivating and selling their filthy, lucrative poppy crop. Meanwhile, Obama sacrifices America’s sons and daughters to bring freedom and democracy to an Afghan nation whose people, government and tribal leaders neither want nor respect freedom or democracy. It is a thankless, futile and endless task which is profoundly wasteful and costly. Obama and his advisors are walking down a loser’s road.

Can we win the Afghan War? My autobiographical book, From Private to General, explores various aspects of that very question. Could I financially afford to do it, I’d give a copy to all our generals and high ranking bureaucrats.

Here’s a relevant snippet: “This day his lecture was on the subject of how to successfully organize and fight guerilla wars. During the question-and-answer period, one of my classmates, referring to President Kennedy’s recent intervention in Vietnam asked, ‘How do you save a nation from communist enslavement when the inhabitants refuse to fight for their own freedom?

‘You don’t” he said. ‘You let them be enslaved!’ Scornfully he added, ‘If a people are unwilling to fight to secure democracy for themselves, you have two choices. You can occupy them and take over their government and armed forces, including promotion authority. This assumes that you also run their communication systems, transportation, and public schools.

‘If your nation is willing to make such an extreme economic investment, commitment, and sacrifice for 20 or 30 years, perhaps you can successfully educate, train, motivate, and raise up a generation of young people who will embrace your values and be willing to fight and die to preserve their own freedom. But perhaps not.

‘Personally, I think there is only a small chance of success,’ he shrugged. ‘The other alternative is to write them off as a free nation’.”

The here and now of it is that Obama, as President, is responsible for the outcome of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon perhaps Pakistan. He continues to place our military establishment under unsustainable mental and emotional pressures and stretches them so thin that our soldiers commit suicide at an increasing rate. Understanding these challenges, how does Obama intend to ease the pressure and better equip our military to win?

His actions to date indicate that he has adopted the failed strategy of reducing the size of the national defense establishment and substantially shrinking the Pentagon’s budget. Am I the only one who sees this as illogical, if not dangerously foolish? How can this make sense? Does it make sense to the spouses and children of those now risking their lives fighting these wars? Will it not generate fear and concern among our allies and incentive and encouragement among our enemies?

Ah, but Obama has switched generals. He has sacked the “too” traditional General McKiernan and replaced him with the creative and flexible General McChrystal. Compared to the new general who is as adept and sophisticated at handling politicians as he is at handling troops on the battlefield, General McKiernan was “old-school.”

Supposedly Petraeus and McChrystal are the new kind of generals we need, ones that this new type of warfare requires. Obama and his advisors are fooling themselves. All the true things said about these two generals could have been said about General Eisenhower seventy years ago. He was given high marks because he could meld the requirements to handle politicians and prickly generals together with placating the news media and being a skilled diplomat.

One of the favorite games played in Washington since 1945 has been the spinning of narratives about new wars and the old, inflexible generals unable to adapt to some modern kind of fighting. Military base libraries are stuffed with books that tell how the military failed to adjust its tactics and strategies to the supposedly new type of war being fought in Vietnam. These books were authored not by generals in the field but by academics from such places as Harvard, Yale and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Now, thirty-five years after the end of the Vietnamese War, shelves are again filling up with books telling how the military fails to adjust to the new type of war now being fought in Iraq/Afghanistan. Supposedly generals with new skills are required, ones that are more savvy, sophisticated and media presentable. We’ve been down this road before.

So, is there such a thing as a “just” war or is war simply war? Have we learned any lessons from the “old” wars that can be applied to the Afghan war? Do we know the difference between engaging in battle for the rights of the oppressed, and staying home because to fight is futile? Sometimes shedding American blood on a foreign battlefield won’t change a thing and, frankly, the oppressed may not want change.

The old German saying still applies, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”