After returning from Iraq, I was jaded. Young when I started, I thought we were doing a good thing. My idealism was stripped away pretty quickly.
After being stateside for a while, there were rumors that our unit would be deploying to Afghanistan. A Lt. Colonel came and gave a presentation to the company about conditions there. During the Q.A., I stood up and asked, "Sir, what are we really doing there? For the life of me, I can't understand the strategic purpose of invading Afghanistan. They're not even the ones who attacked us on 9/11."
To put it mildly, that did not go well. I exited the Corps after my first enlistment and I'm a bitter old veteran now.
The point I want to make here is that the voice of integrity in the military are in the lowest ranks, and they leave as soon as they can, as the situation is intolerable for them. You don't rise in the ranks as a career officer or NCO if you don't believe in the mission.
I had a similar experience, except in the Army "Reserves", in Iraq, and asking my "stupid" question to our Major instead of a Lt. Col. My rank didn't survive the deployment, as I was attached to another unit at the time and asking questions put me high on his shit list. I guess I was lucky my home unit was kind enough to return the stripes before my inglorious departure a few after that deployment.
You are 100% right that folks who don't toe the line, don't make much past E4, although there are a few older NCO's who still maintain their integrity, and take care of their troops.
I don't know if there is such a thing as a "just" war, but I do know we were not fighting one, and the military we have today is an overpriced facade of what it claims to be.
I think it's more of a situation where, no one at that level is going to change anything, so just talking about the absurdity is frowned upon just for the simple reason of negatively effecting moral, and negatively impacting your next promotion review.
Independent thought? Bah! I found the Army to be highly political, everything anyone with rank did was intended to bolster their reviews in the eyes of their superiors. And being a hard charger, always on mission was an easy way to do it. I started to type some stories, but suffices to say, there's a lot of stupid stuff in the military.
Spot on. I don't think the military is a place for people who think too hard. I don't want to make blanket judgements though because I met a few excellent people that earned my respect and I'm happy to know them.
You've got to be in the right job and the right unit. In my experience (~12 years across a handful of units and tours), infantry units are about ten thousand percent less political than POG units. Also Guard units are much more easy-going. I was not the only Mensa member in my last unit, and most of my best friends I met there. Being in the infantry in the Guard is a specific kind of environment, mostly college students and police officers. There is a tolerance for free-thinking and independent thought that is totally rare anywhere else in the Army.
I was in an infantry unit, Marines. In general politics weren't a thing, if you mean American politics. Internal politics on the other hand are a big deal and it's astounding what people will do to one another to get promoted.
That's what I meant, internal political cruft. All the units I was ever in had some of this to a small degree which is unavoidable in any organization, but I'd work with some other unit that was like some kind of dystopian hellhole of contant internal strife. I don't know if it was just POG behavior in general or units with women or what, but every time I got a peek into how other units work, it was astonishing. Nothing even close to that in any of the Guard infantry units I was a part of over the years. In fact I'm thinking about reenlisting just to deploy with my old unit one more time. I can't imagine doing that in any other universe with any other unit.
I'm glad you found a good unit.
My company probably wasn't that bad, but bad enough. Part of the problem I think is that careerists naturally have a certain conflict of interest that affects how they treat their troops.
Yeah, I think probably the very nature of the Guard works against that pressure, since there is no "fast track" in the Guard. There is somewhat for officers, but enlisted folks have no such luxury. I mean, in the Guard, it's college kids, police officers, and guys coming off of active duty that need to serve the two or four remaining years of their enlistment. Almost everybody with military career ambition joins the active service instead of the Guard. So it's a lot more laid back in general. And these are literally people you'll spend a decade or more serving with. Guys that live near you and have families in your community. So it's a lot more tight-knit than active duty units. It's an older crowd, too. So while it can be cliquish to some degree, it definitely isn't like a lot of units I've seen which are heavily partisan and cliquish, and then made even worse by people with ambition that are willing to screw you to get ahead. The only other place in the military which I would consider equally laid back like the Guard is Special Forces. The best working relationships I ever had were with Special Forces units (and other Guard units). I suppose because they have nothing to prove, there's no friction like there is in regular Army units. Or Marines. I spent a lot of years deployed working with a lot of different folks. I like working with Marines, but they have the same issue as regular Army units, with cliquish behavior and people willing to step on others to get ahead. I totally know what you're talking about.
Well spoken. I made it to Sergeant - I was actually promoted my last week, which was a surprise to everyone. Apparently I was the only person in the company to complete all the prerequisites for promotion that quarter. A nice "fuck you" on my way out the door.
What I personally think he should have said was this:
"Good question Son. Glad you asked. See, the US needs to maintain a military sphere of influence between the resource rich regions of the former Soviet Union and the heavily populated regions of South East Asia. Additionally we would like something of a base between an emerging China and Russia, Pakistan and Iran. You've played "Risk" right? It's a strategic thing see. The terrorism angle is all bullshit. That's just to sell the war to the public. There. Happy now? Great, go pack your bags."
I agree, leaders ought to be able to handle these hard questions and still inspire. I'd expand your "answer" to include
"We know this is a tough mission which why we train hard. As leaders it's all of ours goal to get as many of you home alive as possible."
Believe it or not, they do train with techniques to (for example) charge machine gun positions without losing anyone; grenades, covering fire, and leap frogging. Unfortunately people will die, but a well trained team can do a lot.
We do train to do that but I never assumed that we'd ever not lose anyone in that kind of combat. I'm certain that casualties would be high while assaulting a machine gun nest. The interesting thing is that we haven't done that kind of fighting in many years, probably since Viet Nam. Now we patrol the streets of the third world and get hit by snipers.
Afghanistan actually made more sense than Iraq since the Taliban were harboring Al Qaeda. So when 9/11 happened, it made sense to go after them. Iraq never made sense on the other hand.
Maybe on this surface level. But the intervention was and still is a nonsensical mess. Killing and locking up/torturing people left and right, whether pro or anti-taliban. Making new enemies from potentially pro-american tribes. Empowering some tribes against others, causing grief, resentment, rebellion and instability. Helping people with retribution against old rivals. The current conflict is already longer than the Soviet-Afghan war. Already 10x more civilians died than in 9/11. Really what's the purpose? It hardly can be justice at this point. In 2001 there were 45000 taliban fighters, US killed 60000, now there are around 60000 taliban. Clearly this is not a way to get rid of taliban, if that is the goal.
The sooner the rest of the world can get on to solar, wind, hydro, and modern atomic reactors (not the old dangerous kind, but properly supervised, maintained, and "waste reducing" ones that produce only a small bit of the really bad stuff) the sooner we can de-fund terrorists.
Taliban and Al Qaeda had been at each other throats especially post 9/11. There has never been love lost between them. It had been personal decision of Mullah Omar to put islamic solidarity over realpolitik.
Some clever policymaking - mixing military threats with financial incentive - could result in catching most of Al Qaeda possibly Bin-Laden included and avoid 16 year war. But B-1 coming with vengeance after mountain caves looked better on TV and as propaganda spin post 9/11.
As a mil. Brat to an enlisted infantryman and former AF cgo, i got to see the policy design and implementation at scale. Many were very much dedicated to the mission, but many were also dedicated to greasing up thag contractor for a nice cushy connection when the punch out, were checking their boxes for a transition to their ivy league of choice, or pushing for highly competitive programs like weapons school or a PhD at MIT/Harvard.
But at the end if the day, everyone is dedicated to doing what their function in the greater organization is. The role of the armed forces is to faithfully execute the mission handed to them by their civilian commanders. We are an arm of foreign police (DIME, Diplomacy, information, military, economic pressure).
The POTUS has every bit of power to pull us out, and that is where the cynicism should be directed.
The last secaf fought SO HARD to kill the mil-congressional-industrial complex, but there is too much inertia. The american military machine is a complexed component of American Society.
Wading through the knee-deep shit and blood that is a political quagmire. But I can't imagine a man who is entrusted with inspiring people to go out and die for said quagmire is allowed to say that.
These infantry officers really buy their own bullshit. I've never met one who didn't. It's like religion - the cost of facing the music is just too high for some people. Cognitive dissonance etc.
Did you ever see a historical chart showing the supply of heroin coming out of Afghanistan? It stopped in 2001 but ever since the USA got there it's been growing steadily. Heroin is a huge business with many dark and powerful players.
Afghanistan I do sorta get why the US got involved. I think it’s impossible to “win” there, but I get the involvement. But Iraq was a completely retarded situation. Funding goddamn terrorists in Syria was retarded too. Regime change is retarded in general, aside from the dramatic events like WW2. It never works. Land war on the other end of the world serves only one purpose: just to show that the US government is a dangerous psychopath who will fuck you up at the slightest provocation, or sometimes even without one. Experts in geopolitics (ie George Friedman) call this “projecting power”. A secondary goal is to destabilize regions so that other countries are affected and they don’t consolidate their power and threaten the US interests. A good example are Georgia and Ukraine: crises were created out of nothing to keep a festering boil on Russia’s ass. It’s actually not a bad strategy, but it does tend to backfire, and when it does, it costs a ton of money.
This caused a bigger protest and response was the same. And etc and etc.
At some moment they started to kidnap protesters from the hospitals. Then one of protesters have been found dead near the river. Another found in the wood with plastic bag on his head and they took out his intestines.
> created out of nothing to keep a festering boil on Russia’s ass
There been reasons for it.
You know, I've been a pro-russian ukrainian all my life. I didn't liked ukrainian language(I'm from russian speaking part) and still can't speak it. But when russians started it propaganda campaign I started hate EVERYTHING about russia.
Unlike Russia Today russian speaking propaganda was much dirtier and much more retarded. One they showed a magnet from speaker on TV and said that it was a bomb with HIV dropped by ukrainian aircraft.
So... I wanted to say: fuck your "good example". Because isn't good for non-retarded person.
I’m Russian, but I don’t live in Russia, so I’m not exposed to “Russian propaganda” (you do seem to be exposed to the Ukrainian flavor of it though). I also commiserate with what happened on the Ukrainian side, and in every election where Putin ran I voted against Putin. I dislike the man, and think he will be harmful to Russia in the long term.
That said, you also can’t deny the involvement of the US Department of state in those events. The fundamental geostrategical priority for Russia is to maintain control (or at least good relations with, see Belarus) of the buffer regions around its densely populated regions. This stems from geography and topology: there are no mountains to protect the West of Russia from a land invasion. This is inviolable geostrategic principle that Russia, having learned the lessons of WW2, will just not let anyone touch.
That is why there are “tensions” when your neighbor begins discussions of entering NATO with a bit of USDS help. NATO means (eventually) foreign military bases and tactical nukes within 100km of Rostov-on-Don and Taganrog. This is fundamentally unacceptable to Russia, which they have been saying again and again to everyone who would listen years before things turned ugly. It’s not personal, it’s a question of national security for them. The US would have done the same or worse if Russia got Mexico to enter a military alliance with it.
Again, I sympathize, but I really can’t see how, given the progression of events, things could have turned any differently.
> you do seem to be exposed to the Ukrainian flavor of it though
What makes you think so?
> That said, you also can’t deny the involvement of the US Department of state in those events.
Can you deny existence of life beyond our planet? Neither side can prove or disprove both statements.
> That is why there are “tensions” when your neighbor begins discussions of entering NATO with a bit of USDS help. NATO means (eventually) foreign military bases and tactical nukes within 100km of Rostov-on-Don and Taganrog. This is fundamentally unacceptable to Russia, which they have been saying again and again to everyone who would listen years before things turned ugly. It’s not personal, it’s a question of national security for them. The US would have done the same or worse if Russia got Mexico to enter a military alliance with it.
Yes. Sounds if any neighbor make any decision, which russia won't like it grantees that glorious russians soldiers will happily jump to fight US forces there.
> NATO means (eventually) foreign military bases and tactical nukes within 100km of Rostov-on-Don and Taganrog.
So now we have damn nukes in Crimea. Russia moved them closer to NATO countries. I guess they need entire Moldova to secure those missiles in Crimea.
> The US would have done the same or worse if Russia got Mexico to enter a military alliance with it
Cuba? It wasn't good for it, but not as bad as here.
I see your point but at the same time my country has American nukes in it and we're not scared.
Of course that's a ridiculous comparison given current tensions, but you're assuming that Russia and the USA / NATO somehow have to be enemies by definition and the rest of your argument follows from that. Why would a Russia-Mexico alliance need to be scary? Why would a USA-Ukraine alliance need to be scary? Hey, can't we have Entire-Northern-Hemisphere alliance?
Of course this is not currently realistic, and I'm not actually suggesting all our leaders just hug and be friends. But the only reason that I can see that things are like this is because just about everybody, all the policymakers as well as friendly internet commenters like yourselves, just assume it has to be like this. That makes it sort of a self-fulfilling cycle. Russia and America have a cold war because they have a cold war.
There are plenty of countries in NATO that are about as undemocratic as Russia, or less culturally similar to the founding NATO countries than Russia. If Turkey can be in NATO, why can't Russia? Renaming "NATO" should be the blocker, right. Momentum is the only reason that I can see why these two sides need to be sides.
Really, I don't see why we need to be enemies other than ego tripping politicians doing a penis size contest.
What you’re missing is 20M+ Russians were killed in the last world war. That kind of causes deep seated trust issues. You’re also utterly missing any understanding of geopolitics. May I recommend “Flashpoints” by George Friedman and “World Order” by Henry Kissinger. This will open your eyes to how the world works, and why things are the way they are.
And you should be worried if there are US nukes in you country. That means you’re now in other ICBM-capable countries’ targeting computers, likely for no other reason. When shit hits the fan you’re gonna get nuked. Congratulations.
> May I recommend “Flashpoints” by George Friedman and “World Order” by Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger, seriously? I find it typical for neorealists to assume that if you're not also a neorealist, you "don't understand geopolitics". Cutthroat policy making for its own sake.
Mostly Russians. And 20M is the “official” number. There are independent estimates that put the casualties even higher.
USSR was never “on the same side” as Hitler. It was never a part of The Axis. Stalin was just hoping that capitalist swine would take each other out and then he would roll in and take over. Same as the US was hoping Hitler would fuck up Russia and much of Europe so they could roll in and take over. As far as the spoils of war, the real winner was the US. Britain gave up its last ambitions of being a naval superpower and handed over its navy bases to the US. The US was propelled to the superpower status with relatively little loss of life, and became the dominant industrial power as well. Weakened USSR was denied power in Western Europe. What’s not to like?
Much of the world considers making a deal to carve up Poland as being "on the same side". You don't, but lots of people do, so terms need to be spelled out clearly if you're going to communicate.
The alternative to not “carving up Poland” was to not sign the mutual non-aggression pact and essentially enter into war with Germany before it thoroughly fucks up Britain and France. Britain and France would be quite delighted if Hitler pursued that course of action. I’m pretty sure theyd even withhold any meaningful military assistance to help things along while Hitler makes his run on Russia, for the same reason Stalin did. In fact they sorta had done that already by refusing to enter into a pact against Nazi Germany.
You can’t reason about geostrategic considerations in terms of moral high ground. Those dudes were dealing with a very dangerous and volatile situation, and the decisions they made were literally matters of life and death for their respective peoples.
That’s not to absolve anyone of guilt, but if you’re going to be an armchair quarterback, do yourself a favor and study history a bit more thoroughly. At that negotiating table any of us today would have made the exact same choice.
Sounds like the point you're trying to make is that they did indeed agree to carve up Poland, but it was the least worst option, and in your opinion does not constitute "being on the same side". That was a reasonable contribution.
Your passive aggressive comments and your snide smug "look at me everyone, I'm so clever" childish put-downs; grow up. You actually managed to express a coherent and sensible opinion, and then blew it at the end; you just couldn't quite be an adult about it, and you transformed your whole comment from "rational discourse" to "petulant child".
>The fundamental geostrategical priority for Russia is to maintain control (or at least good relations with, see Belarus) of the buffer regions around its densely populated regions.
Invading your neighbours is ok, if you'll just call it 'good relations'?
>That is why there are “tensions” when your neighbor begins discussions of entering NATO with a bit of USDS help.
Invading Ukraine was not a 'tension' and had nothing to do with NATO. Russia used another pretense.
Invasion of Donetsk and Luhansk has never been proven. Crimea, sure I will concede that. For the record, I don’t approve of it, even though Crimea has been under Russia’s control for hundreds of years, and was only given to Ukraine by Khrushchev in the 50s.
Yes. Some knowledge of history helps in these conversations. Crimea has been under Russian control in some form for hundreds of years and is the home of their most important naval installation. Under political pressure from the West, the felt that their position there was threatened.
Anyone who thinks America wouldn't do the same given the circumstances is mistaken. We're not the "good guys" in the world.
> Invading your neighbours is ok, if you'll just call it 'good relations'?
It is irrelevant. Sane people should recognize that if Russia decides that any of its smaller neighbors are dangerous to Russia from Russia's point of view, Russia will smash those neighbors and absolutely no one is going to risk a fight with Russia to defend such neighbors. You may not like it. I may not like it. Anti-Russian faction of the US may not like but that is the world that we live in. Until this world changes ( and with time it will ) Russia's neighbors are better not do bidding of others who seek to "advance democracy" or do whatever the hell else they want to do which would antagonize Russia. It just won't end up well for those neighbors.
This already happened once. The year was 2008 and a not very much in touch with a real world, educated in the West, Georgia's President bought hook, line and sinker into senile assurances of McCain and other members of the "Democracy for the World!" cabal. Saakashvilli decided to smash what Russia considers its enclave in Georgia (that had a de-facto autonomy inside Georgia, had a very large Russian majority but none the less had as much effect on Georgia's government as a village of 200 in West Virginia that claims to be special an independent from Washington, DC has on those going to Jean George in NYC) during the opening days of the 2008 Olympic Games in China. Putin was at those games. The calculation was rather simple it seems - there was no way Russia would respond militarily. That would be a total PR disaster, right? Well, there's this famous Russian proverb "Гладко было на бумаге, да забыли про овраги" which loosely equivalent to "No plan survives reality". Russia refused to play by the PR war rules. Instead of letting Georgia have those enclaves, Putin sent Russian paratroopers to deal with a Georgian army. So instead of the opposite side being a loose band of self-defense forces, it was Russian rapid deployment detachments. Georgian attack was repelled, their supply lines were cut, forces inside the enclaves were smashed and by the day number three the regular Russian army was deployed to use an overwhelming force against Georgia. Saakashvilli went to ask for help from the US, which he absolutely expected to get, especially since Russians started exterminating his troops. McCain and other clowns mumbled something on TV but at the end calculation was simple - US was not going to go to war with Russia over Georgia.
The same happened with Ukraine. Russia has strategic interests and billions of dollars invested in the Crimea and its ports. One needed to be really naive not to realize how Russia would respond to an attempt to squeeze it out of Crimea. That should have been especially obvious in after seeing Russia's response to Georgia in 2008. Unfortunately, the smartest people in the room did not learn from Saakashvilli's mistakes, so Russia took Crimea. The US did not go to war with Russia over it because it is not the war the US could possibly win. At most it could have delivered some significant damage to Russia. That damage, however, would have paled compared to the damage Russia would have delivered to the NATO counties in Europe. So no one was going to go to war with Russia over Ukraine. No one would go to war with Russia over any other former Soviet Republics.
Luckily, contrary to the scare mongering peddled by some rather insane people, Russia does not really have any interest in starting war with those who don't threaten it.
Give it another 30 peaceful years and Russia would change, just like entire Eastern Europe would. Over a long term, Starbucks and Spotify are must more effective weapons than Apache helicopters, especially since those helicopters need to be shipped from the United States.
It's also highly immoral. Destabilization and war in foreign lands results in devastating consequences for the civilian population. The US Government has a lot to answer for, and likely never will.
Because our shenanigans in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and dozens of other countries happened so long ago...Is that your argument? The United States is directly responsible for worldwide violence just within the last decade. I'm not talking about Thomas Jefferson here.
The government consists of individuals. George Bush. John McCain. Barack Obama. We'll likely never know who all of the people are that influence these terrible policies.
> For the life of me, I can't understand the strategic purpose of invading Afghanistan. They're not even the ones who attacked us on 9/11.
The Afghan government at the time offered sanctuary to Al Qaeda, refusing to hand over its members after they had declared war on the U.S., attacked USS Cole, hijacked four civilian aircraft and crashed them into the World Trade CEnter & the Pentagon, killing thousands; the strategic purpose of invading Afghanistan was to demonstrate to every country that shielding those who commit acts of war against the United States is itself an act of war against the United States — and that being in a state of war with the United States is an unhealthy condition.
What's the strategic purpose of staying in Afghanistan? 'You broke it, you fix it': having invaded, having destroyed the previous government, it is our responsibility to build a functioning government. Additionally, we desire to prevent the resumption of conditions similar to those which enabled the rise to power of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the first place.
> the strategic purpose of invading Afghanistan was to demonstrate to every country that shielding those who commit acts of war against the United States is itself an act of war against the United States — and that being in a state of war with the United States is an unhealthy condition.
It demonstrated that doing anything other than saying "how high?" when asked to jump by the US is unhealthy—if an only if you don't have nukes, anything resembling real air defenses, or a special economic relationship with the US. If any of those are true than you can just do whatever.
I would submit this wasn't a lesson worth spending so many lives and so much money to teach, seeing as everyone already knew that (see: the 80s and 90s). If we wanted to send a novel message we'd have hit countries that matter, and/or pumped all those Afghanistan and Iraq war dollars into renewable energy.
So, it was either a huge strategic blunder or was mostly for the purposes of directing anger away from said countries that matter while probably also hitting the Afghans for mostly-unrelated and unstated reasons. Or it was both.
Nothing is certain but IMO the whole Al Qaida narrative is questionable. Now, it looks like we're there for heavy metals / opium / contracting $$$ and to possibly block China from exerting further influence in the region.
> the strategic purpose of invading Afghanistan was to demonstrate to every country that shielding those who commit acts of war against the United States is itself an act of war against the United States
In hindsight (actually, even it seemed even at the time) it was probably better to offer a more mature presentation to the world community about what we knew about Al Qaeda, why we believed some of its associates to be in Afghanistan, etc.
Rumsfeld and Bush didn't across as authors of some thought-out strategy; they seemed like buffoons. Underground fortresses? [0] Watch this drive? [1]
As it is, most of the world now doesn't believe that the US had any idea what it was doing. We also now know that some well-connected Saudis were directly responsible for some of the planning of the attack.
So I don't think that this "strategic value" panned out in the slightest.
> what we knew about Al Qaeda, why we believed some of its associates to be in Afghanistan, etc.
I was living in Spain and no one needed the US to explain why they "believed some of Al-Qaeda's associates were in Afghanistan". I'm not sure if you didn't watch the news through that time or what, but the Taliban were very upfront about having Bin Laden.
They were up-front about having Bin Laden, but not about harboring "Al Qaeda" - a phrase which Bin Laden didn't use in any public media appearance until a month later.
They wanted evidence that Bin Laden had anything to do with the attacks (which of course he denied).
Why not deliberatively and carefully provide this evidence to the world instead of rushing into a war? What's the strategic value there?
> Why not deliberatively and carefully provide this evidence to the world instead of rushing into a war? What's the strategic value there?
Alternate view: what was to be gained by deliberatively and carefully providing further details on their intelligence sources for general explanations they'd already offered, when it was palpably obvious the Afghan government had no intention of changing the position they'd held for the last three years that there was no way they were going to betray Bin Laden to Libya, never mind the United States? Where was the advantage to engaging in a war of rhetoric with an government committed to protecting somebody that openly called upon his fellow Muslims to bomb the US, a government whose leader compared the notion of giving up Bin Laden to "the end of Islam" and was obviously going to dismiss any evidence presented as insufficient. (even more obvious with the hindsight of what happened a couple of years later when flimsy presentations of evidence harmed the US case for war in Iraq even before it became clear most of the evidence wasn't true)
It's difficult to argue the US action in Afghanistan solved much (though there are certainly people who have benefited as well as those who have suffered as a result) but it's even more difficult to argue they were in a position where they could show that fatwas against the US and series' of attacks culminating in flying jetliners into buildings didn't have any consequences if you weren't a government but had the tacit support of one.
"They wanted evidence that Bin Laden had anything to do with the attacks (which of course he denied)."
What are you talking about? Bin Laden took credit for 9/11 immediately and it was pretty clear that they had their training camps in Afghanistan. Nobody denied that.
Iraq was a different situation. to go there the US had to make up things.
Do you actually believe this? If so, you are misinformed.
If you do continue to believe this: which misquoted video are you going to trot out for this claim? The 9/16 video? The 9/28 video? Can you tell me which credible Arabic translator regards either (or any) of these as "[taking] credit"?
Nobody seriously continues to maintain that Bin Laden "took credit for 9/11 immediately."
Perhaps you are talking about the November video (although obviously that's not "immediate")? Even if this video does show Bin Laden (which of course is very much disputed), the person in the video doesn't "take credit" in the typical sense of the phrase.
> What are you talking about? Bin Laden took credit for 9/11 immediately
Both my recollection and Wikipedia (admittedly neither being authoritative) agree that Bin Laden denied involvement for some time after the attacks (Wiki says he didn't claim responsibility until 2004). The Taliban denounced the attacks the day of and, separately, stated Bin Laden wasn't involved (which might seem weird, but there's some background there that makes it less suspicious than it seems, though of course it could have all been deception). They also volunteered that they'd turn him over if we turned up evidence that he'd been involved, on Sept. 13th (again, of course they could have been lying or stalling, just getting the events/statements straight)
The US demand (Sept. 14th) wasn't that they hand over Bin Laden, it was that they hand over all of Al Qaeda in their territory, all their intelligence on them, and Bin Laden. Given that there were a lot of fighters on their side of the civil war who'd been through Al Qaeda camps, this was probably impossible to do without losing the civil war, between the loss of manpower, the risk (I'd hazard it was a near-certainty) of opening a new and dangerously ill-defined front in the civil war, and the loss of said training resources/facilities. It was never going to happen, and we'd been considering covertly or overtly pitching in with the other side of their civil war for a few months prior (that part I didn't know until just a few minutes ago) anyway.
[EDIT] reading over the sequence of events and the public statements of both sides the Taliban comes off as even more reasonable than I remember them seeming at the time, which was already "fairly reasonable". Could have all been lies, of course, but if you just look at the public statements and the timeline of events—how quickly it escalated—just, wow. At the very least it was terrible PR management on the US' part that we came off looking like unhinged lunatics compared with such genuine shitbags as the Taliban.
Interesting. I didn't remember that his video came out only 2004. I thought it was much earlier. In any case there was not much controversy about the Afghanistan invasion. I don't recall much doubt about that. The real controversy was about Iraq later on.
I asked the question ~2009. What never made sense to me is that with unsecured borders, what's the point of invaded a poor country of goat farmers? Ok yeah, so Al Qaeda supposedly attacked us and they were allegedly being harbored in Afghanistan. But the guys in the planes were Saudi. Why didn't we invade Saudi Arabia? (That's a rhetorical question). If someone wants to come here and hurt us, they can do it pretty easily. Invading Afghanistan doesn't solve that problem. The whole thing is a joke.
Now I'm aware of a host of reasons for us to be there, none of them good. Of course we're in Afghanistan for some purpose.
Yeah, by '09 there was clearly no reason. When they originally sold the war they played up Al Qaeda's size, power, and level of infrastructure (specifically in Afghanistan) so, assuming you believed that[1] the original invasion kind of made sense.
[1] personally, my suspicions that the claims that this organization was so huge and capable and dangerous, yet had only just now managed anything so big and had totally failed to achieve any of the more obvious follow-on attacks, smelled a bit of BS (that is, its size and capabilities were being wildly exaggerated) were confirmed when IIRC Rumsfeld went on the news with a diagram of some GI Joe playset-style giant underground base thing that couldn't conceivably have been built in secret due to its scale and equipment, and claimed that Bin Laden had "not one, but several" of these obviously-fantasy supervillain lairs hidden in Afghanistan. That they were clearly lying about the popular war that was an easy sell definitely colored how I received their later pitch on Iraq. Not that it mattered.
It's shocking now to watch. How did anyone ever buy this? I remember being 18 at the time and thinking it was completely ludicrous. I wonder if anyone seriously believed it or if it was just the story that the media needed to hear to feel less sheepish about acting like this war made any sense.
Man, I went to Wikipedia because I was curious whether the timeline and events I had in my head for the early let-the-inspectors-back-in demands and the later, infamous leave-or-die "ultimatum" Bush leveled against Hussein right before Iraq invasion was correct (there's very little about all that, and I found some material on the ultimatum itself but never the actual word "ultimatum", which is weird since that's what everyone called it at the time and a big deal was made of it) and now I'm all pissed off again that Bush & Co. aren't in prison for life, from reading all the war lead-up material, including some of the suspected-at-the-time-and-now-confirmed stuff about how they were planning to invade no matter what. Wow, there are some emotions I hadn't felt in a while. Nostalgic, I guess.
I don't doubt the US was happy to go to war (and do doubt Bin Laden would have gone quietly if the Taliban had said "you're welcome to come and arrest him") but it's something of a stretch to imagine Afghanistan only wanted to "see some proof" even if that was one of their stated positions.
The Taliban had spent the last three years refusing multiple countries' requests to extradite Bin Laden for other bombings and was lead by a man married to one of Bin Laden's daughters who compared the notion of handing over Bin Laden as a betrayal akin to the "end of Islam"
You probably mean the Taliban, but while they may have been the largest of several de facto or putative governments in Afghanistan at the time, they were never the government of Afghanistan.
The whole Al Qaida thing is murky with CIA engineering and scapegoating. Maybe I sound like a conspiracy theorist, I don't know. They were a pretty convenient foil for us to invade a whole bunch of countries that we had no business invading.
Dude, I think it is great you have left the army. I offer you another anecdata :
I have an American friend here in Groningen ( NL ) who has been living here for about 30 years now.
In the eighties he was stationed in Germany. Due to the thawing relationship between the US and the USSR a meet and greet between Russian and American soldiers was organised. He discovered they were ordinary guys, not monsters. They talked intelligence : both groups had knowledge about weapon systems of their enemies.
It opened his eyes, he left the army and stayed in our beautiful city.
This is a false equivalence. Yes, the individual soldiers shared commonality. But your implication that the Cold War was just a story line doesn't align with the facts. Read Solzhenitsyn. Look into Hungary 1956, Prague in 1968. To dismiss the Cold War as just a "story line" is the shallowest of arguments that flies in the face of history.
It's hard to develop a coherent picture when operations are shrouded in secrecy and, in some cases, covered by multiple outright deceptions. Sometimes all you're left with is speculation, and I don't begrudge anyone who tries to makes sense of it. The trend towards leaking in the information age is turning many conspiracy theories into facts.
I don't protest because I don't have time, nor would I think it's effective. People are just too busy for a war that is completely separated from them to care about it. I did care, at one point, but I too have been grinded down by both my experiences overseas and the people I served with.
I enlisted in the USMC in 2005. 0311. Felt like I had been ready since I was 11 or 12.
I went to Boot Camp, and then SOI. First taste of reality is bitter. My entire generation of Marines were called the 'X-Box' generation for our complacency and lack of earnest effort. Our ranks had swelled up to ~215K in the Marine Corps, and with it, a lower of the bar to join. That's just the way it was. Kids were already getting kicked out - hardship, drugs, etc. Still didn't mind - it felt like everyone was on the same page. We were crusaders to be, and our religion was America and deliverance was provided in the form of 5.56mm. Felt good, the narrative. Felt right.
And then I joined the fleet, and that's when I realized I was a fucking idiot. This whole time, I had believed in something grand, some kind of romanticized view of war and life and how boys - no, men like me - could make a huge impact and different in the world against a nefarious enemy that struck out at all that was good. And you know how many people shared that view? Maybe 5, 10%. We were intelligent, idealistic, and had some 'reason' to be there. That is not the case for the vast, vast majority of people who enlist. It usually takes some life experience for you to join up, hit the fleet, and not be bewildered by it, and that was something virtually all of us, with the precious few best of us, lacked.
When we got in country, the shock was amplified. The aimlessness/worthlessness of my generation was reflected in both wars. I was in Iraq twice, and both times, it seemed like our only job was to just maintain the security of Ramadi, and then Al Asad. That was it. Occasionally hunt bad guys, get blown up all the time, be bullet/bomb shields by proxy for a populace that wasn't 100% sure what it wanted.
What exactly was the mission to stop foreign fighters from flooding into the country? Beats me. What exactly were we going to do to uproot and prop up a culture that is has no real concent of loving thy neighbor and working together to achieve some state of sovereignty? Beats me. How do we turn this society into a capital G Great society? How were riflemen supposed to achieve that? Would it even meet the objectives of the mission? Nah we thought, we should just keep handing out generators, heavy equipment, and speedballs (not the drug) to the populace. We were just enlisted men on the bottom, evoking smiles when we did good and hate when we accidentally kill some guy's brother because he ignored the red flag not to go down this road towards our base.
Nothing changed, day in, day out.
I knew quite a few devil dogs who were in OEF, Kandahar and Helmund, before + after Marjah offensive. The feeling was the same. What exactly, are we doing here? For an organization that prides itself on achieving objectives, even at great individual cost, we sure did a shit job at explaining what exactly our goals were to the operators.
All this to say, what CAN I say that hasn't already been said? I don't need to 'protest' anything, because I don't hear a lot of people supporting our operations over there except for chicken hawks. I'm glad McCain's son, and John Kelly's children served with me. At least they put what is most dear to them on the line for what they believe. Can't say the same for most of modern day 'conservatives'. They have nothing on the line when they send people over, and that's the best I can protest, but what's the point? Nobody else seems to care either way - it seemed like the wiser of us had realized the whole thing was bullshit from the beginning, and now just don't care and have accepted it to be the way things are, sixteen years later. To top it off, we just have too much shit going on at home. Politics is really showing how bad democracy can get when the people themselves, the vessels of power, are fucking idiots and care more about feeling good than making good decisions for the future. I've got a housing crisis here, insurance crisis there, financial security crisis everywhere, so where can I fit in some good old protesting time? If I did, who would hear me? My old friends wouldn't want to hear it either. We just want some kind of peace of mind and happiness in our life, not dwell on the pointlessness of it all.
We are the aimless generation, just trying to survive the journey through the minefield our forefathers had left us, day after day.
Thank you for your writeup. Here's something you could consider that may help evoke change - take these ideas into a longer article and pass it over some editors to try and get it published in a more mainstream forum.
a decent article until it went political at the end - almost as a "BTW..."
It failed to bring most of the wars (or "police actions") into the picture. Maybe because all of the 'major' conflicts prior to desert storm (C/WW1/2/K/V) were headed by the opposite political party than that mentioned. This is not to say other conflicts didn't happen under other parties as they obviously have.
While the reasoning is sound insofar as the 'unmentioned' conflicts were fought primarily by draftees (again - politics?), it really gives no satisfactory reason, only conjecture and opinion (politics) on the current military actions - which SPANS political parties.
Sadly, the introduction of politics into an article initially put forth as something about the "morality or war" says more about the intent of the author than the question the article brings up.
You want to talk about war without talking about politics? And do you think the level of politics where war is decided really care which party is in power at the time?
no - war and politics are always going to be intermingled. The issue is that people (especially in today's climate) are polarized, emotionally blaming one 'side' or 'the other' when both are equally culpable.
My point is that this could have been a great article. The 'morality of war' is always something that should be talked about and debated, etc... but when one 'side' brings up 'such-and-such-party', that party's 'true followers' feel the need to defend them, and reply in kind and nothing is resolved, everyone else (who wanted an actual discussion) rolls their eyes and leaves with their shoulders slouched in defeat/despair/apathy.
I think the author purposefully included politics in there, he probably didnt care if it was a decent article or not because he was more or less expressing his views.
The article draws a parallel between WW1 and the present conflict.
Possibly the difference between than and now is the sheer number of people directly involved in the War. With great respect to those who have been affected by the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, it is possible for many people (especially here in Western Europe) to ignore the conflict altogether in ways that it was not possible back then.
The reason the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have gone on as long as they have, is because even most Americans have been able to personally ignore what's going on, particularly the last five or so years of it (obviously in the years immediately after 9/11, the war & terror propaganda was so overwhelming it was nearly impossible to avoid).
Around 140 US soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan combined in the last four years. Most Americans will ignore conflict at that scale if they're told it's beneficial. Although Trump managed to get a lot of traction out of pointing out the financial cost while directly contrasting that with America's various domestic financial problems (such as the need to spend vast sums on infrastructure). A large majority of the US population understands very well at this point that the US can't afford the perpetual war machine any longer; we'll see what the war machine does to counter that cultural shift.
So.. if the US hadn't supplied the Mujahideen with stingers, and brought down the soviet backed government in Afghanistan.. none of this last 30 year nightmare would have happened?
Cool. Think of all the amazing things we could have done with that surplus capital not going to bechtel...
Anyone who believes that a military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else outside the U.S. to fight a vaguely threatening idea of "terror" is a good idea should watch the new Ken Burns documentary about Vietnam.
The author implies that a citizen army would lessen the leadership's appetite for offensive overseas campaigns.
Interestingly enough, the bulk of Israel's army to this day is composed of drafted 18 year olds, and despite that, the only time there was a major public outcry about the necessity of a military campaign was during the first Lebanon war (1982). that war was perceived by the public as a reckless regime-changing adventure by a particular general (Ariel Sharon).
I assume that the IDF's decades long policing mission (=occupation) of the West Bank along with the periodical campaigns in Gaza & Lebanon do not generate an outcry of similar size, presumably due to the much stronger indoctrination level of the Israeli public, as opposed to that of the American. There is a general consensus around the absence of a less violent path to coexistence in the Middle East.
to this day, I've been a supporter of reforming the IDF into a smaller professional army with the express purpose of making it more difficult for the state to apply foreign policy using force, with the added benefit of keeping unwilling citizens outside of the cycle of violence.
The article, however, implies that the US has achieved the ability to increasingly "project power" by detaching its military apparatus from the society as a whole..
I was in Iraq in 1991. My friends and I were astounded when we heard of the cease-fire; we could easily push towards Baghdad and take care of Saddam Hussein, who was clearly the Hitler of our time. "We'll be back in a decade" I thought, as it seemed as if we were leaving with our work unfinished.
I was off by a couple of years, but in 2003 when we went back into Iraq to finally take care of Hussein, I was pleased. Of course, I had long since left the Army and now it was some other bunch of soldiers sitting in a tent. When they pulled Hussein out of his spider hole, I was thrilled. Justice, right?
But Iraq didn't turn into a shining example of emerging democracy; it was a shit-show of tribal feuds, incompetence, waste, fraud and abuse that continued to kill decent American kids. The contemporary Iraqi WMDs -- the reason for our costly endeavor -- never really materialized (though their historical presence and usage against Kurds and Iranians was often downplayed). It became increasingly clear that all our involvement contributed to was a power vacuum in which something nastier could breed.
Afghanistan, a seemingly more focused war due to the Taliban's sheltering and support of al Qaeda in the wake of 9/11, at this point appears to be no more productive. Different tribes, different waste, fraud and abuse, different American kids killed so career politicians can check a box on their list of accomplishments.
While I still respect men & women who join the military, my disdain for the "warrior worship" culture that has become the norm has grown. When I returned from the Gulf in 1991, I was amazed by such goodwill and support for the military; it was, I believe, a collective reaction to the infamous reception Vietnam-era soldiers received upon coming home. I would not want to deprive returning troops of the same feel-good experience, but at the same time I've grown weary of almost seventeen years of "thank you for our service" and the obligatory shots of troops abroad watching the sportsball game du jour, the abuse of the term "hero", and this somehow normalized condition of young men and women being sent to shithole third-world countries "to keep America safe".
We're in the second decade of this madness, with no clear goals for victory or even to declare a statemate. As much as I love my country, at this point were there even a hint of a draft I would be the first to drive my teenage boys to the Canadian border -- a concept that would have astounded and enraged a younger me.
Amidst the author's pious wailing and gnashing of teeth, the question "where are today’s skeptical veterans?" is posed.
Well, here's one. And I'm far from alone. Most of us, I suspect, aren't vocal because of one simple reason: it will accomplish nothing.
As with other causes, such as the environment, drug legalization, investment in national infrastructure, additional funding for scientific research, our political class turns a deaf ear to the populace. We the little people have our designated role: fly the flag of Team Pepsi or Team Coke, pay our taxes, and become enraged at each other while the aristocracy does what they will.
We are largely jaded, and having assessed the impossibility of stopping the tide many of us merely do what we can to stay on higher ground and be cognizant of storm surges.
I agree with most of what you're saying, but I'm not buying that these things (peace, environmental action, science investment, etc) aren't happening because the masses are being stymied by the powers that be.
On the contrary, I don't see the masses caring about these things at all. Do you?
I don't see the majority of the people demanding action against (or even acknowledging the existence of) climate change.
Nor do I see them demanding action against endless war or illegal surveillance.
Nor do I see them begging for more money to be invested in science.
Instead I see the people sometimes arguing about a few hot-button political issues, but mostly I see the people preoccupied with pop culture and their daily lives.
We, the People, have made it abundantly clear that we are fine with the status quo. No one had to coerce us.
Remember, the Iraq War was not started over the outcry of the American people.
Well, poll people about universal healthcare. It's, what, 70% support? Poll people about legalization of marijuana. Poll people about private prisons. Poll people about police buying military weapons, tanks on streets. Poll people about asset forfeiture. Poll people about a living wage. Poll people about gerrymandering. Poll people about money in politics. Poll people about the revolving door. Poll people about student loans. Poll people about net neutrality. Poll people about the TPP. Support for the Iraq war was created by lies and propagandists, explicitly and intentionally -- public opinion was manufactured through deceit, not genuine. And there were still huge antiwar protests and massive antiwar sentiment.
You will get massive support on a wide variety of issues completely invisible to modern political discourse if you ask people. But the people asking the questions have enormous power. If you rate congresspeople by their collective votes in congress, if you let mainstream pundits who are paid explicitly to maintain the status quo ask questions, the answers will not be inspiring and most will look similar.
I don't blame people for not demanding action, for not demanding things at all, since they've been taught it doesn't work and it's a waste of time. They are resigned to being ignored, they do not consent. Most American's don't vote. The keywords here are apathy and a disconnect with the system, not agreement.
>We, the People, have made it abundantly clear that we are fine with the status quo.
Whether you lean D or R or neither, do you really believe Trump was a vote for the status quo? The Ds got shut out and the Rs are breaking apart and can't even work as a party. Things are changing, I just don't know if it's for the better.
They really could vote though! As much as I hate him, Trump proved that you can win without the political and business establishments behind you.
There are meaningful structural reforms that need to be carried out that would make it easier for the people's will to be expressed (gerrymandering, electoral college, citizens united, etc etc).
But as of right now, no "establishment" is changing votes or shutting down "anti-establishment" media. If the people voted for a President AND Congress that would take real action on things like climate change, it would happen.
But do you see the majority of the people even trying to do that any time soon?
>But do you see the majority of the people even trying to do that any time soon?
We barely have the majority of the people show up at the polls.
One of the more groundbreaking things about Trump is he is the first R of note to denounce the Iraq war. The problem we currently have with the establishment is as a rule, they don't criticize publicly other members of their party.
For me, that was significant. Ole Jeb said he would fight the Iraq war again. Probably not because he believed it, but because he wouldn't criticize a fellow R, let alone his own brother.
Just think of all the decades of bad policies we have that may have been reversed had that unspoken rule not existed?
In the years since, I've sometimes thought about my counterparts in the Iraqi army during the Gulf War: the ones on the "Highway of Death", and the ones simply bombed to smithereens in the middle of nowhere.
Their leadership probably deserved that fate, though few of the rank-and-file.
I wonder what Iraq would be like today if we had done in 1991 what we postponed to 2003. I wonder how many of those Iraqis killed since the Gulf War would have been able to make their country a far better place than it is today.
Ultimately, the whole thing has been a massive failure; it would have been better for us, and likely much of the Middle East, to have let Iraq take Kuwait (and Saudi Arabia, for that matter). It wasn't our fight. It was never our fight.
> As much as I love my country, at this point were there even a hint of a draft I would be the first to drive my teenage boys to the Canadian border -- a concept that would have astounded and enraged a younger me.
Easier said than done for someone like me who never enlisted, but my take is having a draft would actually reduce the ability to wage war on a whim, since war would actually have the potential to impact more well off and politically connected people...
Certainly, reinstating the draft would be a massive shift in how we've done things since the mid-70s. There's no guarantee that it will ever return, even if it was needed.
But at some point, if you really do have a military-industrial complex pushing for eternal war (I'm still not sold on how much weight this faction actually carries relative to the incompetence or malevolence of a handful of high-level advisers) and you're facing not only increasing public skepticism but a decreasing pool of qualified enlistment candidates, you've got to up the ante.
My kids will likely never be in danger of being drafted into the military. I've already advised them against joining it of their own free will, which I think is somewhat unfortunate. I regard most of the time I served to be well spent in terms of building self-confidence and marketable skills, in addition to the (older) G.I. Bill. But the country I served -- and the military I served in -- ain't the one around anymore.
Edit: oh, and a draft doesn't really endanger the children of the rich or connected. Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" (1969) wasn't a revelation. Think Mark Zuckerberg's child will ever be drafted? The children of most of the people who have personal assistants in Washington DC? Hah.
The Vietnam draft had a loophole for upper middle class kids - the college deferment. What sense did that make other than to exempt rich kids from going to war?
IDK, my uncle got drafted during Vietnam and ended up as an embassy guard in Berlin -- guess it helped that my grandfather worked for some California senator...
I think impacting everyone is a big part of the idea. I'm all for every possible tactical advantages if we're risking the lives of our youth and I don't know that a full vote in both the house and senate in order to wage war is the right thing but I'd absolutely support some sort of constitutional amendment that created a tax and draft for any military engagement that lasts more than 30 or 60 days or something.
We have to pay for that stuff and we have to staff it.
The real costs of Iraq and Afghanistan will play out over the next 50 years. Vets already commit suicide at a staggering rate. We already under treat post traumatic stress. We under treat most emotional issues. We over treat "pain." The divorce rate among soldiers is something like 2 to 3x the national average. The people that go and do the fighting don't exactly make up a nice normal looking slice of our national demographics either..
We've seen the efforts to combat apathy, especially during the last political season and the subsequent year: rage, passion, and plenty of ignorance.
"News" now consists of some talking heads yelling at each other, other talking heads desperately trying to label this group or that phrase or that other imagery as evil incarnate, interspersed with footage of extremists in the street screaming and breaking things.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody apathetic about the state of the country right now, outside of those who are totally ignorant about it. And just because some people aren't vocal doesn't mean they aren't simmering about something.
Educating a populace strikes me as far harder than getting them all worked up, doubly so after they've been all worked up.
I don't think she ever said he was good, just that we don't have strong enough evidence that chemical weapons were used by Syria to use military force against Assad. Chemical weapons could have been used by rebels, or even used or planted by the CIA.
If you believe we have solid proof that Assad ordered the use chemical weapons, I have some WMD's in Iraq to sell you...
Is the title meant to be reference to Joe Haldeman's The Forever War?
The article doesn't mention it, but it is capitalised suggestively near the end. Also, Haldeman's novel is widely regarded as a criticism of the Vietnam war, and the article does discuss the lack of literature critical of recent wars.
After being stateside for a while, there were rumors that our unit would be deploying to Afghanistan. A Lt. Colonel came and gave a presentation to the company about conditions there. During the Q.A., I stood up and asked, "Sir, what are we really doing there? For the life of me, I can't understand the strategic purpose of invading Afghanistan. They're not even the ones who attacked us on 9/11."
To put it mildly, that did not go well. I exited the Corps after my first enlistment and I'm a bitter old veteran now.
The point I want to make here is that the voice of integrity in the military are in the lowest ranks, and they leave as soon as they can, as the situation is intolerable for them. You don't rise in the ranks as a career officer or NCO if you don't believe in the mission.