I do not know Mr. Quentin L. Smith and research only came up with the scumbag who shot two police officers, and I am certain they are not the same. Therefore, I know not the validity of this letter, but it sure caught my radar. I hope you do not mind Mr. Quentin L. Smith, whoever your are sir, if i make a slight adjustment to the title of your wonderful letter, by removing the word “General,” and replacing it as I did with Mattis and use the term “Mr.” He is not a general in my eyes or to most of my brother and sister veterans. In my professional opinion, today we have no “real generals” in service to our once great nation. In sum, thank you for your service to our country in both the U.S. Army and the FBI.
General (Mr.) Milley:
During testimony before the Congress of the United States you stated:
“I want to understand white rage, and I’m white…What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?…I want to find that out.”
Well, General, (Mr.) I am a 76-year-old white man, a former officer in the United States Army (1967-70), and a retired Special Agent of the FBI with nearly 29 years of service (1971-1999). I attended Trump’s rally on January 6th and I think I may be able to help you understand the reasons for “white rage.”
You impugn the motives of hundreds of thousands of patriotic citizens: whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, male, female, young and old. They weren’t trying to overturn the Constitution! They wanted nothing more than to make their voices heard and, if possible, delay the certification of an election they believed, with probable cause, was stolen. You and the media repeatedly claim Trump’s allegations of a “stolen election” are false. Neither you, I, nor anyone else know whether this is true or not because the evidence (hundreds of witness affidavits signed under penalty of perjury, pristine mail-in ballots, Xeroxed ballots, the synchronized shutdown of ballot counting in 5 swing states until observers were removed from the election headquarters, etc.) has never been tested in court or disclosed to the people.
Apparently, my presence in Washington, DC on January 6th qualifies me, in your estimation, as one of those “outraged white people” you want to understand. Since you appear to be somewhat intellectually challenged, let me give you just 13 easy to understand reasons for my “white rage” as you like to call it.
I’m outraged that a duly elected President, the most effective President in my lifetime, was harassed, falsely accused of being a Russian agent, undermined, and lied about by “Deep State” career officials like yourself and a media that has become the mouthpiece of the Democrat Party; he was impeached and acquitted, not once but twice, during his entire 4-year term of office on clearly fraudulent charges.
I’m outraged that BLM, Antifa, and other Marxists rioted during the summer of 2020 in cities across the country, and “heels-up” Kamala Harris led an effort to bail those who were arrested, out of jail. Over 500 people, arrested for trespassing and vandalism at the Capitol on January 6th, remain in jail without bail and, in some cases, are held in solitary confinement. This is not a defense of vandalism, but, how does the damage from the riots of summer 2020 compare to that at the Capitol on January 6th?
I’m outraged that a president who accomplished more for the American people in four years than his three immediate predecessors did in 24 years having restored the US economy, cut taxes and regulations, made the US energy independent, brought unemployment rates down to their lowest level ever, destroyed ISIS, brokered peace deals between Israel and other Arab nations, defended our southern border, put America first, etc., etc., was fought every step of the way by Democrats and the Deep State.
I’m outraged that this same president, who received eleven million more votes than he did in 2016, was questionably defeated in an election in which election laws were unconstitutionally changed in the days, weeks, and months immediately preceding the election, supposedly because of a virus.
I’m outraged that a senile 78-year old career politician, who can’t put a coherent sentence together, who accomplished nothing during his 36 years in the US Senate and eight years as Vice President, who didn’t campaign and seldom left his basement during the campaign for President, and who could never draw a crowd of more than 200 people at one time, was declared the winner over a President who drew tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters at each of his multiple rallies, daily, during the campaign.
I’m outraged that Candidate Biden bragged about having put together “the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics” (it’s on video) during an interview on October 24, 2020, with Crooked Media, a left-leaning media company founded in 2017 by former Obama staffers, and the media says that Trump lies when he claims the election was stolen!?
I’m outraged that on January 28, 2018, before the Council on Foreign Relations, Joe Biden bragged how he once threatened to withhold $1 billion in authorized military aid to Ukraine unless the former President of Ukraine “fired” the prosecutor who was investigating the corrupt energy conglomerate, Burisma, with whom Biden’s son, Hunter, was being paid $84,000 per month to serve on the Board of Directors. Can you say, “quid pro quo?” But, when Trump congratulated the newly elected President of Ukraine, who campaigned on fighting corruption, and encouraged him to follow through on his campaign promise, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) blatantly lied about what Trump said and Trump got impeached!
I’m outraged that the FBI was given Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop computer, the hard-drive of which contained emails reflecting the corrupt practices of the Biden family vis-à-vis Ukraine and China and the FBI did nothing with it since crazy ol’ Joe was running for President. Can you say: “Hillary Clinton and unauthorized servers containing top secret documents?” Do you see a pattern here?
I’m outraged that the “New Oligarchs” of high tech are censoring virologists of their right to voice their thoughts and opinions when those opinions are in conflict with the Democrat Party or the CDC.
I’m outraged that an agency for which I proudly worked for nearly 29 years was politicized and corrupted by James Comey who was accurately described as being “out of his mind” and a “crooked cop” by a former Deputy Director of the FBI.
I’m outraged that thirteen U.S. Marines were recently killed in Afghanistan by the Taliban just because our senile President was too arrogant to follow the blueprint put together by President Trump and his military advisers for the “conditioned” withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. Perhaps, you and our incompetent Secretary of Defense objected, but were either too cowardly or too busy promoting Critical Race Theory to push back and provide needed oversight of this withdrawal. You succumbed to “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and now, as a result, you have the blood of thirteen dead Marines on your hands.
I’m outraged about how the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. military personnel from Afghanistan was carried out “before” securing the removal of tens of thousands of U.S. citizens, Afghani interpreters, and others who assisted the U.S. military over the past twenty years, leaving them and Afghani Christians to be tortured and killed by the Taliban. And you didn’t even give advance notice to our NATO allies.
I’m outraged that you and Lloyd Austin carried out the withdrawal of the U.S. military without first securing the removal of $85 billion worth of military equipment, weapons, ammunition, Humvees, and aircraft, which you left behind for the Taliban, al Qaeda, and a re-emerging ISIS to use. I agree with a retired British Colonel who recently publicly stated that President Biden shouldn’t be impeached, but rather he should be court martialed. You should be, as well…for dereliction of duty and cowardice.
I could go on but I believe you get “my drift” as to why I and so many others – white, black, Hispanic, Asian, male and female, rich and poor, young and old – are experiencing flashes of “rage” and “anger” against this current administration. If you had any honor and decency, you would resign and retire.
Failure in Afghanistan Has Roots in the All-Volunteer Military
For the past three decades, careerism among senior officers coupled with the disconnect between the American public and the All-Volunteer Force have led to failed and unnecessary overseas military interventions.
By Paul Cavallo
September 2021
Proceedings
Vol. 147/9/1423
The tragedy that unfolded over the past several weeks in Afghanistan began with the creation of the “all-volunteer” military in 1973 and the self-promoting careerism that has stalked the Pentagon ever since. Too few leaders have been willing to speak truth to power and say no to overseas military adventurism that had little bearing on the safety and security of this nation. And it goes without saying that those in charge when the war begins are never those who have to finish it.
We saw this most clearly when, in 1990-91, America sent its young warriors into the deserts of the Middle East. We called it “The Gulf War” and “Desert Storm,” but it was, in reality, America’s first mercenary war. The Bush administration cut a deal with the Saudis and Kuwaitis: our men, their money. Kuwaiti “princes” lived large in hotels from Saudi Arabia to Paris while our young soldiers and Marines dug fighting holes in the desert under a searing sun.
U.S. Marines in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. (Naval Institute archives)
The peacetime, all-volunteer military, after all, was a good job with benefits and perks. And that “war” went relatively well and quickly with few American servicemembers killed or injured, to the high praise of the U.S. public who were entranced, awed, and seduced by the lethality, performance, and accuracy of our high-tech weapons, while forgetting that the troops on the ground, in the desert, held it all together and made the irrefutable success of the war possible. Yet it was also the start of the forever wars. Saddam Hussein remained in power after the war and the U.S. military remained in the Middle East—enforcing no-fly zones and oil embargoes on Iraq with naval forces in the Persian Gulf and air and land forces based in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.
While it might be a “chicken or the egg” argument, it is hard not to see that the permanent increase of U.S. military presence in the Middle East went hand in hand with the rise of militant Islam and anti-American terrorism. How many Americans remember the 1996 terrorist bombing of a U.S. Air Force barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia? Nineteen U.S. servicemembers were killed and 498 wounded. Two years later, the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya killed 12 Americans and hundreds of civilians and wounded 4,500 people. Then came the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole (DDG-67) in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and injuring dozens of others. Less than a year later came the 9/11 attacks, answered shortly by the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. A little over a year later, under the false pretense that non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would be used against the United States, came the invasion of Iraq.
The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 19 U.S. servicemembers and injured nearly 500 more.
By the end of 2003, U.S. special operations forces had completed much of their mission in Afghanistan to capture or kill senior leaders and high-value targets within both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The Pentagon, however, rather than putting their “swords” away somehow decided to “nation build” a medieval land of warring tribes into a Western-style democracy, ignoring the fact that our democracy took centuries and many great wars to achieve.
For the past 31 years, the brunt of the cost has been borne by the all-volunteer force. The majority of American citizens have not served (none were required to), and most know few who have. A few dozen—or even a few hundred—servicemembers killed per year was the cost of doing business. But where were the generals and admirals who should have stood up to the civilian leaders, without compromise, to say “enough,”—that foreign wars too often leave our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines dead and forgotten, and for what? Were the military’s senior leaders just following along in-line, waiting for their moment, their chance for another star, or a richly coveted post-retirement job with a “vendor.” Were they just inured to the burdens of the profession? Unable to see the giant machine in which they were cogs—the failed foreign policy that resulted in the spilling of blood and national treasure for questionable (if any) gain.
It is no surprise that the “war” in Afghanistan eventually became a bottomless money pit. More than a trillion dollars was spent; did it make our nation safer, or did it just make Washington-connected corporations rich? Some of that money was funneled back to Congress through campaign donations and favors, all the while young Americans were being killed and wounded. Walk into any Veterans Administration hospital and see first-hand the reality that was brought home.
So, with the most recent deaths and injuries at Kabul International airport—clearly caused by a lack of planning, foresight, and courage at the top—we witness more evidence of the ongoing tragedy and travesty that is American “foreign policy” and the willingness of senior military leaders to go along with it. Will we ever learn? History suggests, no.
Postscript: While some commenters on the actual article disagree with the author, I do not. I understand where he is coming from and follow his line of thought completely. The disconnect between the American public in general and the military and their assigned missions is indeed relevant. A quick “war story” if I may.
Serving as a temporary Chief of Staff at a command when the actual made a quick decision to retire, I had to handle my job as well for a few months while the Corps had to find a colonel for the billet. After a few months of this double duty my general, a fresh-caught BG, comes in my office with a cup of coffee to shoot the bull. Out of the blue he calmly says, Jim you know you will never make general.” To which I laughed telling him all I ever wanted to be was a Gunny. He asked if I wanted to know why, and of course I knew he wanted to tell me so I said yes.
He told me he knew several generals who would jump at having me as their COS because I had a knack of letting seniors (and juniors) know that if they cannot handle your answer they should never ask me the question. He said generals cannot do that. They must always speak the party line or they will never move above one star, which is why so many generals retire as a BG. They spoke outside the party line once and were passed over, or they want nothing to do with it and retire.
Personally, I took his comments as compliment as that philosophy helped me to rise from private to colonel, and I was not about to change it. When a general speaks, understand he is never telling you what he truly believes in his heart. He is simply a mouth piece for the admisntration at the time.
Since today is that day, here’s a look at what this holiday really means and how it came about. I learned something and I am sure you will also. From my favorite blogger, a Marine , and brother — Mustang. I loved it. Your comments here after you read it please.
You probably don’t know this about me, and it may surprise some of you. I am an devote animal lover. My bride says I would wreck the car rather than run over a squirrel, and you know what? She’s probably right. She also asks why I don’t have the same compassion and affection towards the human race as I do for the animal kingdom. That’s an easy one to answer. Humans are stupid, they are in charge of their own destiny, but many are too ignorant to understand that. They are inherently selfish, egotistical, or just plain idiots. I mean, look around you folks.
On the other hand the animal kingdom may be considered selfish, but only to the point of survival. I used to be an avid hunter like my Dad. The last animal I killed was a cow Elk back in my Montana days. I did not need the meat, but I did it, and felt awful about it for days. I will admit the meat was superb unlike venison. For the uniformed, Elk are grazers like cattle, while deer are browsers. That was around 2001, and I have never killed an animal since, and never will.
So, why am I telling you all this about me? Well, that POS and his Sec State lied to us. But then, from what I can gather they worded their comments in such a matter that they weren’t actually lying. “We did not leave any dogs in cages at the airport.” LOL. Now it appears the key word was “cages.” They turned them loose before they departed and allowed them to run wild.
Some of you may be thinking so what, their animals, save the American citizens. Really? Let me pose this to you. If you were an American citizen there and knew the withdrawal date was nearing and having lived with these barbaric scum and seen what they are capable of, would you not have packed up your trash and got the hell, out of there? If you say no, you are what I am talking about when I said humans have control of their own destiny, animals do not. Those American citizens made choices and remained for whatever reason, even those who worked for our Govt. I’m not saying we should not go in and get them, but those dogs had no choice so they are as important to me as those citizens — same priority!
Why could we not have loaded the dogs on the aircraft? Because there was no plan for this operation.
The Taliban’a commander of Kabul airport tells us US troops let their service dogs free as they evacuated.
The dogs are being rounded up, and the Taliban plans to, in an ironic twist, put them back into service for the Islamic Emirate.
Who is Bing West? In case you do not know of him here is a quick rundown from Wikipedia of his early life as a Marine and shortly thereafter:
West was an infantry officer in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. He led the mortar platoon of 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines. Later, he served with a Combined Action Platoon that fought for 385 days in a remote village. He was also a member of the Marine Force Reconnaissance team that initiated “Operation Stingray”: small unit attacks behind enemy lines. He authored a study at the RAND Corporation entitled “The Strike Teams: Tactical Performance and Strategic Potential”. This paper was the featured event at the 1970 Department of Defense Counterinsurgency Research and Development Symposium. The RAND Military Systems Simulations Group implemented a classified model of West’s concept. This doctrinal innovation was directly opposed by Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), which favored the Army’s concept of Air-Mobility “Fire and Thunder Operations”. By way of rebuttal, West wrote The Village, chronicling the daily lives of 15 Marines who protected Vietnamese villagers by living among them in their hamlets. The book became a classic of practical counterinsurgency and has been on the Marine Corps Commandant’s Required Reading List for five decades. (One of only three books I have ever read about the Vietnam War – great read if you’ve not).
Our disaster in brief
By Bing West
Following 9/11, a bit of wreckage from the Twin Towers was buried at the American embassy in Kabul, with the inscription: “Never Again.” Now Again has come. On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the Taliban flag will fly over the abandoned American embassy and al-Qaeda will be operating inside Afghanistan. Fifty years from now, Americans will stare in sad disbelief at the photo of an American Marine plucking a baby to safety over barbed wire at Kabul airport. What a shameful, wretched way to quit a war.
The root cause was extreme partisanship in Congress. By default, this bequeathed to the presidency the powers of a medieval king. The Afghanistan tragedy unfolded in four phases, culminating in the whimsy of one man consigning millions to misery.
Phase One. 2001–2007. After 9/11, America unleashed a swift aerial blitzkrieg that shattered the Taliban forces. Inside three months, al-Qaeda’s core unit was trapped inside the Tora Bora caves in the snowbound Speen Ghar mountains. A force of American Marines and multinational special forces commanded by Brigadier General James Mattis (later secretary of defense) was poised to cut off the mountain passes and systematically destroy al-Qaeda. Instead, General Tommy Franks, the overall commander, sent in the undisciplined troops of Afghan warlords, who allowed al-Qaeda to escape into Pakistan. Thus was lost the golden opportunity to win a fast, decisive war and leave.
Acting upon his Evangelical beliefs, President George W. Bush then made the fateful decision to change the mission from killing terrorists to creating a democratic nation comprising 40 million mostly illiterate tribesmen. Nation-building was a White House decision made without gaining true congressional commitment. Worse, there was no strategy specifying the time horizon, resources, and security measures. This off-handed smugness was expressed by Vice President Dick Cheney early in 2002 when he remarked, “The Taliban is out of business, permanently.”
On the assumption that there was no threat, a scant 5,000 Afghan soldiers were trained each year. But the fractured Taliban could not be tracked down and defeated in detail because their sponsor, Pakistan, was sheltering them. Pakistan was also providing the U.S.–NATO supply line into landlocked Afghanistan, thus limiting our leverage to object to the sanctuary extended to the Taliban.
In 2003, the Bush administration, concerned about the threat of Saddam’s presumed weapons of mass destruction, invaded Iraq. This sparked a bitter insurgency, provoked by Islamist terrorists, that required heavy U.S. military resources. Iraq stabilized in 2007, but by that time the Taliban had regrouped inside Pakistan and were attacking in eastern Afghanistan, where the dominant tribe was Pashtun, their own.
Phase Two. 2008–2013. For years, the Democratic leadership had been battering the Republicans about the Iraq War, claiming that it was unnecessary. By default, Afghanistan became the “right war” for the Democrats. Once elected, President Obama, who said that Afghanistan was the war we could not afford to lose, had no way out. With manifest reluctance, in 2010 he ordered a “surge” of 30,000 U.S. troops, bringing the total to 100,000 U.S. soldiers plus 30,000 allied soldiers. The goal was to implement a counterinsurgency strategy, yet Obama pledged to begin withdrawing troops in 2011, an impossibly short time frame.
The strategy aimed to clear villages of the Taliban, then leave Afghan soldiers — askaris — to hold them and to build infrastructure and governance linked to the Kabul central government. In a 2011 book titled “The Wrong War,” I described why this strategy could not succeed. In Vietnam, I had served in a combined-action platoon of 15 Marines and 40 local Vietnamese. It had taken 385 days of constant patrolling to bring security to one village of 5,000. In Afghanistan, there were 7,000 Pashtun villages to be cleared by fewer than a thousand U.S. platoons, an insurmountable mismatch. Counterinsurgency would have required dedicated troops inserted for years. President Obama offered a political gesture, not a credible strategy.
My experience was different. In trips to Afghanistan over ten years, I embedded with dozens of U.S. platoons. When accompanying our grunts, the askaris did indeed fight. But ten years later, it remains a mystery to me why our generals refused to acknowledge what our grunts knew: namely, that the Afghan soldiers would not hold the villages once our troops left.
This wasn’t due to the structure of their army. The fault went deeper. The askaris lacked faith in the steadfastness of their own chain of command. Afghan president Hamid Karzai reigned erratically from 2004 through 2014, ranting against the American government while treating the Taliban with deference. His successor, Ashraf Ghani, a technocrat devoid of leadership skills, antagonized both his political partners and tribal chieftains. Neither man instituted promotion based upon merit or imbued confidence in the security forces. Familial and tribal patronage pervaded.
From the Kabul capital to province to district, from an Afghan general to a lieutenant, positions and rank depended upon paying bribes upward and extorting payments downward. We were caught on the horns of a dilemma caused by our political philosophy. Because we wanted to create a democracy, we chose not to impose slates of our preferred leaders. On the other hand, the askaris had no faith in the durability or tenacity of their own chain of command.
In contrast, the Taliban promoted upward from the subtribes in the different provinces. While decentralized, they were united in a blazing belief in their Islamist cause and encouraged by Pakistan. The Afghan army and district, provincial, and Kabul officials lacked a comparable spirit and vision of victory.
Phase Three. 2014–2020. From 2001 to 2013, one group of generals — many of them household names — held sway in the corridors of power, convinced they could succeed in counterinsurgency and nation-building. That effort, while laudable, failed.
But that did not mean that a Taliban victory was inevitable. Quite the opposite. A second group of generals came forward, beginning with General Joseph Dunford. The mission changed from counterinsurgency to supporting the Afghan army with intelligence, air assets, and trainers. President Obama lowered expectations about the end state, saying Afghanistan was “not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again.” U.S. troop strength dropped from 100,000 in 2011 to 16,000 in 2014. With the exception of Special Forces raids, we were not in ground combat, so there were few American casualties.
Battlefield tactics shifted to what the Afghan army could do: play defense and prevent the Taliban from consolidating. By 2018, U.S. troop strength was lower than 10,000. Nonetheless, General Scott Miller orchestrated an effective campaign to keep control of Afghanistan’s cities. Afghan soldiers, not Americans or allies, did the fighting and dying. The last U.S. combat death occurred in February of 2020.
Nevertheless, narcissistic President Trump, desperate to leave, promised the Taliban that America would depart by mid 2021. He cut the number of American troops in country to 2,500. With those few troops, General Miller nonetheless held the line. The U.S. military presence, albeit tiny, motivated the beleaguered Afghan soldiers. When the Taliban massed to hit the defenses of a city, the askaris defended their positions and the U.S. air pounced on targets. In addition, our presence provided a massive spy network and electronic listening post in central Asia, able to monitor Russia, China, Pakistan, and Iran. At a cost of no American lives and 5 percent of the defense budget, Afghanistan had reached a stalemate sustainable indefinitely at modest cost.
Phase Four. Bug-out in 2021. President Biden broke that stalemate in April of 2021, when he surprised our allies and delighted the Taliban by declaring that all U.S. troops would leave by 9/11, a singularly inappropriate date. As our military packed up, the miasma of abandonment settled into the Afghan psyche. In early July, our military sneaked away from Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night, which triggered a cascading collapse. Once Afghan units across the country grasped that they were being abandoned, they dissolved. What followed was a chaotic evacuation from the Kabul airport, with the Taliban triumphantly entering the city.
Asked why he had pulled out entirely, President Biden said, “What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point, with al-Qaeda gone?” That stunning fabrication was a denial of reality: Al-Qaeda are commingled with the Taliban in Kabul. As the world watched, America had to rely upon Taliban forbearance to flee. President Biden had handed America a crushing defeat without precedent.
Evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 23, 2021.
President Biden has claimed that the ongoing evacuation occurred because the Afghan army ran away instead of fighting. In truth, the Afghan soldiers did fight, suffering 60,000 killed in the war. Their talisman was the American military. No matter how tough the conditions, somehow an American voice crackled over the radio, followed by thunder from the air. Those few Americans were the steel rods in the concrete. When that steel was pulled out, the concrete crumbled. The spirit of the Afghan army was broken.
During the month following the abandonment of Bagram Air Base, the Pentagon remained passive. In contrast, a month before the abrupt fall of Saigon in 1975, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger was concerned about the North Vietnamese advances. As a former grunt in Vietnam, I was his special assistant during that turbulent time. He informed State and the White House that he was ordering an air evacuation; 50,000 Vietnamese were rescued before Saigon fell. In the case of Kabul, the Pentagon took no such preemptive action.
Worse, selecting which Afghans can fly to safety has been left to State Department bureaucrats, although State has an abysmal ten-year record, with 18,000 applicants stuck in the queue. Each day approximately 7,000 undocumented immigrants walk into America; about 2,000 Afghans are flown out daily from Kabul. In the midst of an epic foreign-policy catastrophe, the priorities of the Biden administration remain driven by domestic politics and constipated bureaucratic processes.
What comes after the botched evacuation finally ends?
(1) A course correction inside the Pentagon is sorely needed. Our military reputation has been gravely diminished. The 1 percent of American youths who volunteer to serve are heavily influenced by their families. About 70 percent of service members have a relative who served before them. The Afghanistan War spanned an entire generation. What they took away from this defeat will be communicated from father to son, from aunt to niece.
To avoid alienating this small warrior class, the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs must put aside their obsession with alleged racism and diversity in the ranks. Former secretary of defense Mattis said that lethality must be the lodestone of our military. Sooner or later in the next six months, we will be challenged. Instead of again waiting passively for instructions, the Pentagon should recommend swift, decisive action.
(2) President Biden’s image as a foreign-policy expert is indelibly tarnished. As vice president in 2011, he vigorously supported the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq. Three years later, U.S. troops were rushed back in to prevent Iraq from falling to the radical Islamists. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote at the time, “he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign-policy and national-security issue over the past four decades.”
President Biden bragged that under his leadership, America was “back.” Instead, while denying that our allies were upset with his performance, he has destroyed his credibility. Perhaps there will be changes in his foreign-policy team, but President Biden himself will not be trusted by our allies as a reliable steward.
(3) In his Farewell Address, Washington wrote, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”
As Washington warned, due to extreme partisanship, the American presidency has accumulated the powers of a king or a despot. In matters of war, over the past several decades one party in Congress or the other has gone along with whatever the president decided. This tilts power decisively in favor of the White House. Congress has abdicated from providing either oversight or a broad base of public support. The White House as an institution has become regal and aloof — the opposite of the intention of the Founding Fathers.
Afghanistan, from start to finish, was a White House war, subject to the whims and political instincts of our president. The result was an erraticism that drove out strategic consistency and perseverance. A confident President Bush invaded Afghanistan, blithely expanded the mission, and steered a haphazard course from 2001 through 2007. Presidents Obama and Trump were overtly cynical, surging (2010–2013) and reducing (2014–2020) forces while always seeking a way out divorced from any strategic goal. President Biden (2021) was a solipsistic pessimist who ignored the calamitous consequences and quit because that had been his emotional instinct for a decade.
(4) Our Vietnam veterans were proud of their service. The same is true of our Afghanistan veterans. In both wars, they carried out their duty, correctly believing their cause was noble. After nation-building was designated a military mission, our troops both fought the Taliban enemy and improved life for millions of Afghans. With the Taliban now the victors, it hurts to lose the war, especially when the decision rested entirely with one man.
Who are we as a country? Who will fight for us the next time?
This article appears as “Who Will Trust Us the Next Time?” in the September 13, 2021, print edition of National Review.
Postscript. I have not always been a great fan of West. As a Marine in RVN he served courageously, and I loved his book The Village. However, it is always easy to be an armed chair QB and on Monday morning outline everything Tom Brady did wrong, despite his seven Super Bowl rings. He is obviously a good friend of the former Marine about whom I have nothing good to say. I’ll let you decide who that may be, albeit Bing mentions him several times in the diatribe.
Despite all that I do believe and agree with much he says, but then that’s Bing’s way, I mean it is Monday morning right?
