Tag Archives: generals

The Pentagon and the Generals Wanted This Disastrous War, by Ryan McMaken

Posted on August 21, 2021 | Leave a comment

Being a general is a pretty good gig. You stump for war to increase your power and prestige, and when you retire, you join the defense firms your war advocacy enriched  as an executive, a member of the board, or both. The only thing that can screw it up is peace. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:

In early July, Ron Paul penned a column titled “It’s Saigon In Afghanistan,” invoking the imagery of the fall of Saigon in 1975, when US military helicopters scrambled to evacuate personnel from the roof of the US embassy. But Paul suggested that maybe the situation in Afghanistan was “perhaps not as dramatic” as the situation in Saigon forty-six years ago.

But that was six weeks ago.

Now, it looks like the end of the US’s war in Afghanistan may be in many ways every bit as chaotic as the US regime’s final defeat in Vietnam.

When Paul was writing his article in early July, we were already getting hints of the direction things were going. US forces abandoned Bagram Airfield in the middle of the night, and the US didn’t even tell its allies what was going on. Afghan officials discovered the US was gone hours later. Shortly thereafter, looters ransacked the base.

But that, it seems, was just the beginning. Over a period of a mere ten days, provincial capitals in Afghanistan have fallen one after the other. On Sunday, the Taliban entered the strategically key capital Kabul. The Taliban’s reconquest of the country was so fast that even the US regime’s spokesman admitted “the militants’ progress came much more quickly than the U.S. had anticipated.”

Now, after spending twenty years implementing “regime change” in Afghanistan, and after spending more than $800 billion—an official figure that’s likely far smaller than the real monetary cost—the US’s strategy in Afghanistan has completely collapsed.

Indeed, for the US’s local allies, the situation is far worse now than what it was in 2001. Those who were unwise enough to ally themselves with the Americans over the past twenty years now face reprisals from the Taliban. Death will likely be the result for many.

Not surprisingly, then, Afghanis in recent days have flocked to Kabul International Airport, desperate to find some way out of the country as the Taliban closes in.

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Where Have You Gone, Smedley Butler? by Danny Sjursen

Posted on February 23, 2020 | 1 comment

You’d think America would have at least one renegade general who would publicly state that forever wars are idiotic and criminal, but sadly, that’s not the case. From Danny Sjursen at tomdispatch.com:

There once lived an odd little man — five feet nine inches tall and barely 140 pounds sopping wet — who rocked the lecture circuit and the nation itself. For all but a few activist insiders and scholars, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is now lost to history. Yet more than a century ago, this strange contradiction of a man would become a national war hero, celebrated in pulp adventure novels, and then, 30 years later, as one of this country’s most prominent antiwar and anti-imperialist dissidents.

Raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and educated in Quaker (pacifist) schools, the son of an influential congressman, he would end up serving in nearly all of America’s “Banana Wars” from 1898 to 1931. Wounded in combat and a rare recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor, he would retire as the youngest, most decorated major general in the Marines.

A teenage officer and a certified hero during an international intervention in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion of 1900, he would later become a constabulary leader of the Haitian gendarme, the police chief of Philadelphia (while on an approved absence from the military), and a proponent of Marine Corps football. In more standard fashion, he would serve in battle as well as in what might today be labeled peacekeeping, counterinsurgency, and advise-and-assist missions in Cuba, China, the Philippines, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, France, and China (again). While he showed early signs of skepticism about some of those imperial campaigns or, as they were sardonically called by critics at the time, “Dollar Diplomacy” operations — that is, military campaigns waged on behalf of U.S. corporate business interests — until he retired he remained the prototypical loyal Marine.

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The Military and State Can’t Handle the Trump Truth, by Larry C. Johnson

Posted on January 20, 2020 | Leave a comment

You can’t call generals who have never won a war and lost plenty of them losers, it might bring down the republic. From Larry C. Johnson at Sic Semper Tyrannis blog at turcopelier.typepad.com:

An excerpt from a soon to be released book, “A Very Stable Genius” (which appeared in Saturday’s edition of the Washington Post) apparently was written with the intent of presenting Donald Trump as a crazed, unstable individual. The authors of this hit job (two Washington Post reporters) clearly relied on Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn and Jim Mattis as primary sources. But rather than expose Trump as mentally unfit to be President, the authors unwittingly expose their own extreme bias and highlight how the men Trump named to key positions in his administration–Tillerson at State, Cohn at the White House and Mattis at DOD–tried to undermine the President and drug their feet in carrying out Trump’s directives. These men, in my view, are bureaucratic cowards. They should have resigned if they felt so strongly about Trump’s violations. But they wanted to hang on to their little pieces of turf.

The piece is introduced with this telling paragraph:

So on July 20, 2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial. What happened inside the Tank that day crystallized the commander in chief’s berating, derisive and dismissive manner, foreshadowing decisions such as the one earlier this month that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. The Tank meeting was a turning point in Trump’s presidency. Rather than getting him to appreciate America’s traditional role and alliances, Trump began to tune out and eventually push away the experts who believed their duty was to protect the country by restraining his more dangerous impulses.



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Afghanistan War – The Crime of the Century, by Ron Paul

Posted on December 16, 2019 | Leave a comment

The war was the crime of the century, the lying about ranks a close second. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan. We didn’t know what we were doing.” So said Gen. Douglas Lute, who oversaw the US war on Afghanistan under Presidents Bush and Obama. Eighteen years into the longest war in US history, we are finally finding out, thanks to thousands of pages of classified interviews on the war published by the Washington Post last week, that General Lute’s cluelessness was shared by virtually everyone involved in the war.

What we learned in what is rightly being called the “Pentagon Papers” of our time, is that hundreds of US Administration officials – including three US Presidents – knowingly lied to the American people about the Afghanistan war for years. This wasn’t just a matter of omitting some unflattering facts. This was about bald-faced lying about a war they knew was a disaster from almost day one.

Remember President Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld? Remember how supremely confident he was at those press conferences, acting like the master of the universe? Here’s what he told the Pentagon’s special inspector general who compiled these thousands of interviews on Afghanistan: “I have no visibility into who the bad guys are.”

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Epic Crimes in Myanmar, by Eric Margolis

Posted on September 1, 2018 | Leave a comment

The corrupt military is still the real ruler of Myanmar (Burma). From Eric Margolis at lewrockwell.com:

As the genocidal horrors in Myanmar unfold, I am kicking myself for having risked my skin to go see then sainted leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

This event occurred in Rangoon (now Yangon) in 1996 when Suu Kyi was the revered democratic opposition leader resisting the nation’s brutal military regime. The western media loved her, as it always does third world female politicians fighting dictatorships and thugs. The saintly Suu Kyi was even given a Nobel Prize by Sweden’s always giddy liberals.

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The Generals: Failing Their Soldiers – and America, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on March 6, 2018 | 1 comment

Danny Sjursen makes the same point SLL made in Dereliction of Duty, Part One and Part Two. The generals can’t just rubberstamp political decisions to continue wars the US has no intention of winning. From Sjursen at antiwar.com:

Where are the brave generals ready to ‘call BS’ on America’s forever wars?

September 2006. Iraq was falling apart. Nearly100 American troops were being killed a month. The war seemed hopeless, unwinnable (because it ultimately was). So the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Peter Pace, convened a “council of colonels’ – purportedly some of the brightest minds in the military – to recommend new policies. Only three, reportedly, had any combat experience in Iraq, but still, these guys were sharp. The group debated endlessly and eventually reached an impasse. They had three separate proposals and the group generally divided along service lines. Some Air Force and Navy guys wanted a phased withdrawal – the “Go Home” option – but their ideas were promptly dismissed. Other (mostly army and marine officers) wanted to “engage in prolonged conflict – the “Go Long” option. Finally, the most prominent army officers – including America’s current National Security Adviser, H.R. McMaster – wanted to “Go Big” and heavily reinforce the troops in Iraq with a “surge.” You can guess which side won out.

George W. Bush liked the can-do optimism of the “surge” team and doubled down. Violence briefly dropped, a couple thousand more American troops died, and the military promptly declared victory. We’re still dealing with the fallout.

That generation of colonels became today’s generals. The whole worldview of most senior officers is built on a fable, a myth: the surge worked. The reality is much messier. We’re still in Iraq (and Syria, and Afghanistan, and…everywhere). Still, our generals have a ready response. You see, the story goes, the problem is we didn’t go big enough or long enough and the damn liberals (like Obama!) pulled out the troops too soon. The “surge myth” provides our generals a comforting counterfactual, a road not taken, whereby the military could’ve-would’ve-should’ve won, but were denied victory.

So it stands, in 2018, that instead of a sensible “go home” option, America’s generals and civilian policymakers have handed us the worst of all worlds – a combo of “go big” and “go long.” Forever war.

To continue reading: The Generals: Failing Their Soldiers – and America

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Military Control of the Civilian: It’s Opposite Day in America, by William J. Astore

Posted on August 15, 2017 | Leave a comment

Why does Trump have all those generals in his administration? It’s not like the military has done a stellar job the last thirty or forty years. It’s done a stellar job of sucking up money for itself and its contractors, but that’s about it. Why reward and empower failure? From William J. Astore at antiwar.com:

It’s becoming increasingly difficult for Americans to recall that civilian leaders are supposed to command and control the military, not vice-versa. Consider an article posted yesterday at Newsweek with the title, TRUMP’S GENERALS CAN SAVE THE WORLD FROM WAR – AND STOP THE CRAZY. The article extols the virtues of “Trump’s generals”: James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, John Kelly as White House Chief of Staff, and H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser. The article presents them as the adults in the room, the voices of calm and reason, a moderating force on a bombastic and bellicose president.

I’ve written about Trump’s generals already at TomDispatch.com and elsewhere. The latest gushing tribute to America’s generals at Newsweekillustrates a couple of points that bear repeating. First, you don’t hire generals to rein in a civilian leader, or at least you shouldn’t if you care to keep a semblance of democracy in America. Second, lifelong military officers favor military solutions to problems. That’s precisely why you want civilians to control them, and to counterbalance their military advice. Only in a democracy that is already crippled by creeping militarism can the rise of generals to positions of power be celebrated as a positive force for good.

Speaking of creeping militarism in the USA, I caught another headline the other day that referenced General Kelly’s appointment as Chief of Staff. This headline came from the “liberal” New York Times:

John Kelly Quickly Moves to Impose Military Discipline on White House

Note that headline. Not that Kelly was to impose discipline, but rather military discipline. What, exactly, is military discipline? Well, having made my first career in the military, I can describe its features. Obedience. Deference to authority. Respect for the chain of command. A climate that sometimes degenerates to “a put up and shut up” mentality. Such a climate may be needed in certain military settings, but do we want it to rule the White House?

To continue reading: Military Control of the Civilian: It’s Opposite Day in America

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The Hazards of Military Worship , by Danny Sjursen

Posted on May 12, 2017 | Leave a comment

Worshipping the military might arguably make some sense if the military actually won wars and didn’t waste trillions of dollars, but that’s not what it does. From Danny Sjursen at tomdispatch.com:

Everyone Loves the Troops and Their Generals, But History Indicates That Military Advice Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be

More, more, more.

I was guilty of it myself.  Commanding a small cavalry troop of about 85 soldiers in southwest Kandahar Province back in 2011, I certainly wanted and requested more: more troopers, more Special Forces advisers, more Afghan police, more air support, more supplies, more money, more… everything.  Like so many others in Afghanistan back then, I wanted whatever resources would protect the guys in my unit and fend off the insurgent threat. No one, of course, asked me if the U.S. military should even be there, nor did I presume to raise the question.  I was, after all, just a captain dug into a tough fight in a dangerous district.

It’s funny, though, people sometimes ask me now, “What’s really going on in Afghanistan?”  They ask the same question about Iraq, where I led a unit back in 2006-2007.  I mean, the implication is: If you served over there, unlike those (liberal!) pundits and politicians who regularly mouth off on the subject, who would know better?  But I’ve learned over the years that what they don’t want to hear is my real answer to such questions, so I rarely bother to tell them that historians, analysts, and thoughtful critics, even ones who haven’t been within thousands of miles of our war zones, probably understand the “big picture” better than most soldiers. 

That’s the dirty little secret of America’s wars: despite the omniscient claims of some veterans, most soldiers see their version of war as if gazing through a straw at 30,000 feet. Combat and dedication to your unit and mission naturally steer you toward such tunnel vision.  And here’s the sad thing that no one wants to admit: that mantra applies as strongly to generals as to sergeants (and if you don’t believe that, just check out our wars of the last 15 years).  So it’s worrisome when president after president defers to and all too often hides behind the supposed wisdom of active and retired three- and four-star flag officers.

Don’t get me wrong, some of these guys can be impressive.  No one is perfect, but former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey was a gem with genuine scholarly and combat bona fides.  But consider him and a few others the exceptions that prove the rule.  Which is why civilian control of the military, and of the policymaking process that goes with military action, is not just a constitutional imperative but desirable for thoroughly practical reasons. Which, in turn, is why the makeup of the current administration — with an unprecedented number of generals in key positions — raises some serious questions.

To continue reading: The Hazards of Military Worship

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President Trump, with respect, start ruthlessly purging the U.S. general officer corps, by Zarathustra

Posted on April 12, 2017 | 1 comment

Aren’t the general officer corps supposed to be purged after a loss? The US has lost at least seven times since WWII, and still no purge. From Zarathustra at non-intervention.com:

Last time we discussed your refusal to abide by the Constitution’s hard-and-fast war-making provision, a decision that merits — as it did for most of your post-1945 predecessors — impeachment proceedings. Waging war in the manner you did in Syria is the work of an absolute monarch or a dictator, not that of a popularly elected president of this republic.

Today, we must discuss a topic that has been covered in this space on multiple occasions; namely, the need for you to immediately purge — via forced retirement — scores of your general officers. The American fetish for treating these officers as god-like wonders is baseless, and must be curtailed to the greatest possible extent. Among the most obvious reasons they merit forced retirement are:

–They and their predecessors have not won a war since 1945. In truth, they have won nothing in the most war-filled 72 years in American history.

–They have regularly betrayed the military men and women entrusted to their care by American parents by taking those troops to fight in wars that neither they nor their political masters intended to win. I do not know of a single case, since 1945, when a general officer resigned and told the citizenry that he did so because he refused to lead their soldier-children into a war no one meant to win, and in which the rules-of-engagement made those soldier-children targets rather than killers.

–They hold their positions for venal self-interest. To understand why no general has resigned and told the foregoing truth to the public, just survey the membership of America’s corporate boards of directors. Those boards are loaded with former generals who are making more mounds of money to add to their already luxurious pensions. The formula-for-success for U.S. general officers obviously is: keep silent, get use to losing, get your troops killed for nothing, and you will be generously rewarded when you retire.

To continue reading: President Trump, with respect, start ruthlessly purging the U.S. general officer corps

 

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Too Many Generals Spoil the Democracy, by William J. Astore

Posted on December 21, 2016 | Leave a comment

America has always loved its generals, but in the past the generals it loved were the ones who won. From William J. Astore at tomdispatch.com:

America has always had a love affair with its generals. It started at the founding of the republic with George Washington and continued with (among others) Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. These military men shared something in common: they were winning generals. Washington in the Revolution; Jackson in the War of 1812; Taylor in the Mexican-American War; Grant in the Civil War; and Ike, of course, in World War II. Americans have always loved a hero in uniform — when he wins.

Yet twenty-first-century America is witnessing a new and revolutionary moment: the elevation of losing generals to the highest offices in the land. Retired Marine Corps General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, known as a tough-talking “warrior-monk,” will soon be the nation’s secretary of defense. He’ll be joined by a real mad dog, retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as President-elect Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Leading the Department of Homeland Security will be recently retired General John Kelly, another no-nonsense Marine. And even though he wasn’t selected, retired Army General David Petraeus was seriously considered for secretary of state, further proof of Trump’s starry-eyed fascination with the brass of our losing wars. Generals who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan to anything but victory — pyrrhic ones don’t count — are again being empowered. This time, it’s as “civilian” advisers to Trump, a business tycoon whose military knowledge begins and ends with his invocation of two World War II generals, George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur, as his all-time favorite military leaders.

To continue reading: Too Many Generals Spoil the Democracy

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