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Peter’s out this week, so it’s a Lileks and Long show. But we wouldn’t want to be without a Hoover man. Our guest is Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, whose decades of service in the Middle East make him the perfect man to help us make what little sense we can of the hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan. (And be sure to check out his piece in the Wall Street Journal.) The guys also wonder about what will come of Andrew Cuomo, the “probably-illegal-but who-knows?” eviction moratorium and the overall lunacy of bureaucrats.
Music from this week’s podcast: Lost Cause by Beck
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Lost causes, indeed.
I haven’t read McMaster’s critique of the leadership in our war in Vietnam, written as a Major looking back at a conflict in which he did not participate. But I highly recommend Daniel Bolger’s Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan War, written as a Lieutenant General (retired) looking back at a conflict in which he commanded troops in both theaters of operations.
Bolger wrote, “American airpower and SOF in Afghanistan in 2001, and airpower and armor in Iraq in 2003, worked as advertised. Had that ended our efforts, we would have been fighting well within our means. Admiring war colleges would have studied the brilliant opening rounds as models of lightning war.”
That’s the kind of thinking that gets a 3-star retired, instead of promoted, in 2013 upon his return from Afghanistan.
While I was writing the comment above in the middle of the night this was tweeted:
U.S. Embassy Kabul @USEmbassyKabul The U.S. Embassy urges U.S. citizens to leave Afghanistan immediately using available commercial flight options.
–In Germany the General Staff simply threatened any German city with the return of the RAF night bombing campaign for a week if there was an insurgency. In Japan, they already had nuked two cites. When did the USA ever show that kind of resolve in Afghanistan?
— When did the USA ever face that kind of resolve in Afghanistan? Never. The fact is both Germany and Japan you faced forces that could destroy your country given the chance? Anyone really think the USA is threatened by a ground/naval invasion by Afghanistan?
–Actually Westmoreland was about to win the war, if it had not been for Tet. He was about to launch an invasion that would have cut the supply lines that ran through laos. According to most NVRA that cutting would have ended the insurgency.
–Otherwise the plan you propose would have been a continued defense that might have worked. But most likely resulted in the drowning of the RVN by constant warfare from the North. The facts the Soviets would have died in the 1990s whether or not you ‘won’ in Viet Nam.
–You lost that war, when JFK had Diem murdered. Killing off the last legitimate leader of that country.
Considering how little most supplements can cost, I would expect more like double, if not higher. And I would expect the variety/selection to shrink significantly as well.
I still have contact with friends in Kabul. We use to joke that we didn’t want to be on the last helicopter out of Saigon. More of a warning, less of a joke.
@torywarwriter — “In Germany the General Staff simply threatened any German city with the return of the RAF night bombing campaign for a week if there was an insurgency. In Japan, they already had nuked two cites. When did the USA ever show that kind of resolve in Afghanistan?”
That kind of threat might work, but only against an enemy that actually cares to prevent the slaughter of its fellow citizens. The historical record tells us that that simply does not apply to Communists, who eagerly slaughter millions of their own citizens when they have the chance; nor to Islamists, eager to embrace death in the service of Allah.
The main reason there were no very significant insurgencies in postwar Germany and Japan was probably the absence of nearby sanctuaries or allies.
“When did the USA ever face that kind of resolve in Afghanistan? Never. The fact is both Germany and Japan you faced forces that could destroy your country given the chance? Anyone really think the USA is threatened by a ground/naval invasion by Afghanistan?”
This passage is a little hard to decipher. Obviously, Afghanistan was a danger to the US as a staging area for further 9/11-type attacks.
“Actually Westmoreland was about to win the war, if it had not been for Tet. He was about to launch an invasion that would have cut the supply lines that ran through laos. According to most NVRA that cutting would have ended the insurgency.”
Sounds like a good idea, but I faintly recall that JFK signed an idiotic treaty promising to recognize Laos’ neutrality. (What does NVRA stand for? I couldn’t find it on the Internet.)
“Otherwise the plan you propose would have been a continued defense that might have worked. But most likely resulted in the drowning of the RVN by constant warfare from the North.”
Er, what plan did I propose?
Nixon understood that China did not want North Vietnam to win the war because it wanted a divided Vietnam, just as it wanted a divided Korea. This is the real reason “Nixon went to China”.
“The facts the Soviets would have died in the 1990s whether or not you ‘won’ in Viet Nam.” More likely, their victory in Vietnam give the Soviet regime a new lease on life.
“You lost that war, when JFK had Diem murdered. Killing off the last legitimate leader of that country.”
Arguable but unprovable. Based on the situation in South Vietnam in the early 70s, I think that was all water under the bridge.
Having had ambivalent feelings about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, I was most impressed by Gen. McMaster’s arguments. Of particular interest to me was the parallel drawn to South Korea, about which I know much more (to say the least) than I do about Afghanistan. I lived in the Republic of Korea at the end of the 1960s and have maintained my interest in the history, culture, and language of the country, especially the latter.
Back then, more than half a century, I was young, cynical, and leftist, though not so foolish as to have any sympathy for the thugs in the north. The country was emerging from poverty, but it was all too easy to focus not on the Pak regime’s economic accomplishments but rather on its iron fist. The yawning gap between rich and poor encouraged the notion that it was all corruption and no progress. Friends and I joked that the much-touted expressway being built to link Seoul and Busan would provide a fine avenue for North Korean tanks when they eventually broke through…Oh, but we were so wrong! The country was being transformed. And then democracy came—with, of course, the excesses that come with such, including idiotic leftist students—and politicians.
I have one caveat, now as a citizen of Japan:
When Japan annexed Korea in 1910, there was really no better alternative. Despite its long and distinguished history, Korea had become a basket case. It could not maintain its independence and would most likely have fallen prey to Imperial Russia, if the Japanese had not (at first reluctantly) moved in. No one should confuse Imperial Japan’s policies with the practices of the Salvation Army, but they did modernize the country, from railroads to schools. I lived in a hub of the railway system and taught in a school that was entirely modeled on the Japanese system. My fellow teachers were for the most part at least as literate in the Japanese language as they were in Korean. The assistant headmaster was a notoriously lazy nincompoop, but he held his position on the strength of the fact that in prewar days he had studied in Japan. In Korean, there are countless Sino-Korean terms that are directly taken from Sino-Japanese, not from Chinese.
Both North and South Korea have fostered national myths about 20th-century history, wherein the Japanese are demonized. On the whole, the Japanese do not retaliate by whitewashing the past. This month marks the 76th anniversary of a terrible war’s end. In Japan, the overwhelming mood is one of sorrow and regret…For their part, Americans should, on the whole, be very proud of what they have accomplished in this region of the world.
Have you written or narrated a book about your experiences? They all sound very interesting.