But some gave all. And that is what this weekend is all about. So when you gather around the table for some traditional hotdogs and burgers this weekend, remember to hold hands and give a moment of silence to all those service men and women who are resting in ANC and in all those other hundreds of other cemeteries spread around the world
Jazz Finally at Rest By: Greg Maresca
On January 24, 2022, less than a month after Robert “Jazz” Jasinski, celebrated his 60th birthday, his six-decade run on this third post from the sun came to an abrupt and unexpected close. It would not be until May 23, 2023, that his cremains would be finally interred to their ultimate resting place in Arlington National Cemetery.
As the nation prepares to observe Memorial Day, it was certainly a tailored time to have his last and long overdue request realized. The elapsed time of 16-months – two hockey seasons – would have stirred a hearty laugh tinged with a little disgust from my old friend. Jazz was all too familiar with the enduring federal bureaucracy having spent most of his life toiling on the front lines for Uncle Sam – first as a U.S. Marine and then with the Transportation Security Administration.
The extended and unnecessary ripple effects of COVID-19 still resonate throughout America’s capital city and wokefully ground zero is Arlington National Cemetery. In no way does COVID still make such a prolonged wait for burial justified. It is nothing short of a national disgrace.
We have no issue with packaging multi billions in military aid to Ukraine and thought nothing of bequeathing nearly just as much military hardware to the Taliban in our flight out of Afghanistan – another national disgrace.
Millions pour over our southern border illegally, while we drown in government debt living in a cultural zeitgeist where plenty of folks think nothing of using a $1000 iPhone 14 Pro to check their food stamp balance.
The nation’s capital was like a second home to the Delaware County, Pennsylvania native having done a tour of duty at Marine Corps Headquarters. A favorite D.C. haunt of his was Arlington. Yet, it took 16-months to finally inter Jazz’s ashes among some of the men he served with and those he helped bury while serving with the Corps’ Casualty Notification Unit decades ago.
If Jazz had survived and knew that any veteran had such a long waiting period, he would have been heard. Given the circumstances, he never would have placed himself in a situation to jump the line, either.
Still, with this Memorial Day weekend upon America, we can’t bury some of our veterans in a timely fashion at the nation’s most hallowed and historic burial grounds affording closure for so many families.
There still exists a third of America who takes seriously the nation’s oldest president whose administration is devoid of many things, most of all – wisdom. According to Biden’s recent commencement address at nearby Howard University, America’s greatest threats are not foreign, but domestic. Is it any wonder why on this Memorial Day weekend, the nation is circling the drain of the abyss?
A call to Arlington’s general service number yielded nothing but excuses, namely COVID overkill. What was emphasized was how Arlington conducts approximately 6,400 burials a year averaging 30 per day. Their backlog consists of 4,500 extending the wait to 16 months – now in its third year.
Unanswered in another column from a year ago was when Biden abandoned Afghanistan in record time, why couldn’t he sign another one of his numerous presidential executive orders to expedite laying to rest heroic American veterans in a timely fashion?
Pulling punches is not in the Jasinski DNA as Jazz’s older brother Stan was generous providing solutions saying, “They (Arlington) need to think out of the box by holding larger ceremonies for groups at a time, use special ceremonial units or ROTC for extra manpower to reduce the wait. They have got to stop this ‘is what we have always done mentality.’”
Arlington guards the remains of more than 330,000 immortal souls buried under plain, white granite stones all in formation where every day is Memorial Day, and where waiting lists should be entrusted to the dustbin of history.
Arlington is the priciest of American real estate and is the unabridged narrative of the nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And my old friend, whose ashes now finally rest here, would stress in no uncertain terms that we need to keep it that way.
Rest easy, Jazz, you are finally home.
Yes, may God please bless Jazz, and all the others who have served this once famous country. Amen
Postscript: I just received some very bad news from a Marine Brother, Sam Garland. Our best friend and brother Marine hero, LtCol Vic Taylor, USMC (Ret) from Steamboat Springs, CO has passed away. We know none of the details at this time. When I get more information, I will pass it along on here.
Another good one from my friend and brother Marine, Greg. Thank you Greg. Yes March Madness is upon us in more ways than one. BTW, the Lady Vols won there first round. LOL. Yeah I know, my bride and I watch Women’s College Basketball. I get ribbed about that a lot, especially from the book’s editor, my best Marine friend, Dennis. He simply cannot understand why I watch the women play but not the men. Because watching 7′ giants beat each other up, while I can watch what basketball used to be many tears ago i.e., the Bulls in their heyday!
A March to Madness
By: G. Maresca
Not too long ago, March madness meant college basketball rather than nuclear brinkmanship.
By not winning quickly and outright in Ukraine, former Russian president, and prime minister Dmitri Medvedev, a Putin hand puppet, wasted no time threatening the West saying Russia could rip up its nuclear agreements. Putin endorsed such malfeasance by placing his nuclear forces on heightened alert saying we may face “consequences you have never seen.”
In doing so, Russia placed the once remote possibility that tactical nuclear weapons could be exploited on the battlefield making what was once inconceivable, anything but. Moreover, BCA Research set the odds of a “civilization-ending global nuclear war” over the next year at an “uncomfortably high 10%.”
Russia telegraphed their intentions when troops seized the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant that in 1986 produced the planet’s worst nuclear accident.
Russia is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency where an attack against any nuclear facility committed to civilian power production is a violation of governance. This breach is also included in the United Nations Charter, and the Geneva Conventions.
Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility, Europe’s biggest, triggered a fire in the plant’s administrative building that fortunately did not affect the facility’s six nuclear reactors or produce a radiation leak. This flagrant assault was nothing short of a war crime proving that conventional weapons are far from the only option available in the Russian arsenal.
Putin made it clear for years what he intended to do given his invasion of Georgia and the Crimea proving he has no intention of stopping until his objectives are met. Having NATO intervene to defuse a nuclear disaster risks further escalation but at some point, may be necessary.
Provided Russia captures all of Ukraine’s nuclear reactors it would hold Ukrainians hostage by manipulating the energy supply where small armed detachments would protect the reactors is certainly strategically feasible.
No nation is sovereign without energy independence of which nuclear plays a major role. President Biden voluntarily surrendered ours in exchange for Russian and Middle Eastern oil. American environmentalists approve of fossil fuels provided they come from such perilous places where tyrants like Putin are able to finance their evil.
Provided Ukraine’s nuclear facilities are unsecure, its spent radioactive matter will risk a nuclear catastrophe far beyond Ukraine’s borders. Ukrainians are diligently laboring in the middle of a war to keep the reactors safely operating – unsung heroes in a crusade teeming with them. Ukrainians need an abundance of aid on many levels most especially securing their nuclear power plants and the radioactive material they produce.
Putin’s invasion is not just about returning Ukraine to the Russian fold, but a siege on the international order that for decades has worked to safeguard the peaceful use of nuclear power.
By closing in on Ukraine’s nuclear power plants that total 15 reactors at four sites, Russia rather than the contracted Westinghouse Electric, will profit from Ukrainian nuclear fuel that they had been supplying. What garnered little media attention is the fact that Westinghouse was in the planning stages to build at least five nuclear reactors in Ukraine over the next two decades. According to the World Nuclear Association, that enterprise is worth more than $30 billion for Westinghouse, an American company.
What kept nuclear war at bay during the longstanding Cold War era was M.A.D. — Mutually Assured Destruction. Both the U.S. and Soviet Union knew that any nuclear launch would be returned and annihilate both countries. However, it is another thing entirely to confront a potential nuclear conflict when one side believes it can win.
Russia is not the only American adversary that could employ its nuclear arsenal as a buffer for a conventional invasion. China is modernizing and multiplying its nuclear forces and covets Taiwan the way the Russians do Ukraine. Regarding Ukraine, the Chinese are trying to appear neutral, but in actuality are Russia’s co-conspirator.
The war raging throughout Ukraine should alarm the international community to reassess suppressing nuclear weapons. Failing to take heed to such a benevolent cause will lead to another and unnecessary nuclear arms race.
Add to this toxic mix, the nuclear starved Iranian mullahs – religious zealots possessed with an Islamic apocalyptic mentality – where “mutually assured destruction” is not a deterrent, but an incentive.
Another informative and thought provoking treatise from my good friend and our Marine Brother. Thank you Greg.
Holding the bag.
By Greg Maresca
While many Americans would have trouble finding Utah on a map, let alone Ukraine, they would equally struggle with the acronym, NATO, that if we are being truthful means: Not Able To Operate (without the U.S.). They need to drop the “N” and make it ATO – American Treaty Organization, a synonym for American expeditionary forces.
NATO was established in 1949 to defend Western Europe from the Soviet Union. Its mission according to the alliance’s first Secretary General, Lord Hastings Ismay, “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.”
The post-Soviet Union Russia retained its formidable military that includes thousands of nuclear warheads, so disbanding NATO was out of the question. Besides, alliances, like government bureaucracies, rarely disappear. More importantly, peace through strength is no cliché. Tyrants will always exploit weaknesses and it’s naïve to believe otherwise.
In his historic 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington made it clear how he opposed alliances. Defense treaties always work to the advantage of one country and to the disadvantage of another.
The other always being the United States and as the most powerful member we will continue to pay for ensuring its effectiveness.
NATO protects Europeans from having to provide for their own defense. It is a lot easier to let the American taxpayer pick up the tab, while also keeping the sea lanes free and open. Granted, it’s in my interest if my neighbor’s house doesn’t go up in flames. However, that doesn’t mean I must pay his house insurance.
The well-intended but fossilized NATO is more bark than bite when it comes to any support that is not American in origin. Our southern border is under siege but do not count on any NATO member to come to our aid. We can’t even count on some NATO members to vote with us at the United Nations, where we also pay the majority of the U.N.’s bill.
NATO’s first supreme commander, Gen. Eisenhower, said if U.S. troops were still in Europe in 10 years, NATO would be a failure.
Article V of the NATO treaty says any attack on a NATO member will be treated as an attack on all. NATO’s sole Article V intervention was in 2001 in Afghanistan – a long way from Europe and the North Atlantic and its founding objective.
Any member that fails to meet their obligations betrays the alliance by being strategically and ethically negligent and by escalating their dependence on Russian gas and oil only magnifies their irresponsibility.
NATO members prefer to invest in the socialist welfare state than in the necessities of defense where allegiance to the alliance and to one another is debatable. Regarding military contingency, NATO would rather conduct summits where the English would make the reservations, the Germans the strudel and the French hors d’oeuvres. All the while, Uncle Sam does the heavy lifting with the troops, tanks, planes, and ships.
During a Bold Guard/Northern Wedding NATO exercise, the only NATO trooper I interacted with was a drunk Dane who approached our armory of which I was one of two sentries. It is sobering to behold what a sliding bolt can do for the language barrier. I suppose the Carlsberg beer that was three for a dollar was just too good to pass up. The Danes did provide a hot meal in one of their air bases’ chow halls that the salty grunts of the 4th Marine Amphibious Brigade promptly cleaned out to the dismay of our hosts. Without a doubt, Uncle Sam was billed accordingly.
Lack of accountability has bred imprudence like unionized troops throughout NATO. One Air Force captain told of a NATO exercise where he was walking with a couple of Dutch officers when they passed two generals. The Americans saluted, while the Dutch, who were wearing hair nets to cover their shaggy hairdos, waved. The Dutch explained how their union claimed saluting was humiliating.
Yet, historians still debate why it took the Nazi’s four days to eliminate the Dutch from World War II.
If our NATO allies took their defense seriously, they would be a formidable neutralizer to Russia and assuage their reliance upon the U.S., while saving Uncle Sam plenty of money and headaches.
Received an email from a fellow retired Marine—whom I highly respect—that included the following messages. I share these with you as my second blog post on the current recruiting plan put forth by our CMC significantly touted as, “Operation Semper Fi.”
* * * *
Marine Brothers, one and all. I forwarded this to a select few generals. I intend to email Senator Rick Scott…former navy officer. The words and thoughts are harsh but should not be ignored. I fear we are back to 1947…which way will it go?
I want to share these inciteful comments from a distinguished Marine, the father of two outstanding Marine officers (one infantry, the other combat engineer), both of whom had multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I feel sorry for the head of recruiting. At the same time that the CMC insults and denigrates previous generations of Marines and their flawed culture he is trying to rally retired Generals and Marines to help the Corps recruit. Sending it to retired Generals is preaching to the crowd that at about 80-90% supported or fell silent on the critical issues of perversion, depravity, fraternization, reverse racism, sexual preference for women, unisex uniforms, women in the combat arms, the elimination of tanks, tube artillery, numerous infantry Bn’s, 25% of F-35’s and CH-53F’s, female grooming standards, 18 months of maternity leave, the destruction of the MAGTF concept, the vapid attacks on the culture of the Corps and its racist/sexist heritage. Add to that a bevy of Generals who went from Warriors to politicians and openly and repeatedly insulted a sitting President.
A Marine four- star CINC presided over a catastrophic NEO from Kabul taking orders from the Taliban about who, what, when, how, and why and then fled in the dark of the night with his tail tucked between his legs.
Our beloved Corps is at an historic low point with few allies on the Hill and an American people who view us as mere victims. Eighty percent of our Generals appear to have been intellectual midgets without a spine, charisma, presence, or persuasive verbal skills. They appear be average to below average men by every measure. When the time to stand up and be counted came, they opted to pass. This made it even harder for those willing to do the right things, the right way, for the right reasons.
We know who has a high propensity to enlist and we don’t want them. Instead, we chase after the misanthropes, the gender confused, the lost souls, and those we know are poorly suited to the battlefield. We encourage those to join the Corps whose interests are totally self-serving, to then change the Corps.
The Corps must reassess the culture it has abandoned if it expects the endorsement and support from those who have retired. I cannot, at this juncture, encourage an 18 year old to join the Corps. I say that with a very heavy heart.”
I must admit that with a very heavy heart, I have already convinced one 18-year-old to forego his lifelong desire to become a Marine and go on to college in hopes that—just maybe with God’s help—the Corps will be back on track.
* * * *
Another highly respected Marine known to me wrote:
Sometime back, I opined that the success of Berger’s “Great Leap Forward,” his “re-imagining” of our beloved Corps to make it more “representative of our country,” would be reflected in the retention rates of serving Marines and the recruiting of new ones. The following is from a Brother Marine regarding the missive recently sent to all retired Marine generals by the CG, USMC Recruiting Command requesting their support of “Operation Semper Fi:”
“My response: I will watch… but if they think they can muster Marine Veteran support if they continue the march to “woke land” …and all that implies including fostering Marxist ideology masquerading as modern liberalism they are sadly mistaken. Veterans will support traditional Marine values not forced ideas that are counter to common sense and successful traditional values. The thinking of those forcing the “new order” is being brought to us by the same people or their progeny that abandoned us in Vietnam and tried their best to turn the entire country against us—they failed but as a result they are now working from the inside of government (civilian and military) to have their way.”
Please stand by Marines, and others. There is much more to come in the ensuing days regarding this disgusting issue. It will end with my open letter to General Berger!
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?
Jazz Finally at Rest By: Greg Maresca
