Ia his National overview article “Three wars, no victory – why?” (February 18, 2021), Bing West, my former colleague at the Pentagon and Naval War College, is pursuing a compelling case as to why the US – which he says is the most powerful country in world history – 50 years: Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Bing divides the blame for each of these losses among three hubs – namely the military, the policymakers and the popular vote among the people of the country. He correctly argues that the policy hub, or the policy makers, were primarily responsible for the failures.
Although I have some experience in all of these conflicts, having served in Vietnam and visited Iraq three times already, and Afghanistan, it does not match that of Bing, who is one of the bravest people I have ever been to. knew it. However, I still believe that he gives a sometimes incomplete and misleading picture of why we lost these three wars.
In analyzing the Vietnam disaster, for example, he ignores the fact that the war was waged under false pretenses. President Johnson received congressional authorization in 1964 to begin the massive escalation in Vietnam in response to an alleged attack by the North Vietnamese on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. But even before the congressional inquiry, it was clear to any experienced naval officer that the administration had claimed it was wrong. I remember my commander in VP-1, who flew combat missions in World War II and Korea, telling us that the attacks did not happen as claimed. This confirmed something that Vice Admiral James Stockdale, who was Bing and my boss at War College, and who received a medal of honor for his courage as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and who was in the area at the time. So too a naval officer who convinced Senator Wayne Morris (D., Ore.) To become one of the two senators who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. (Both lost their next election.) When it came to light, it also increased opposition to the war among the American people.
Another reason why we failed in Vietnam is that the war could never be won in the first place. Bing argues that our poor military strategy from 1965 to 1968, bad policy decisions and the popular vote doomed the war in Vietnam. These factors played a role, but in reality only heightened an existing reality – a reality that was made clear to me in 1966 when my colleagues and I got lost when we returned from a meeting with SWIFT boat officers in the northern part of Cameron Bay, South Vietnam. As we drive aimlessly and try to get back to our base, we come across a Catholic monastery. A priest there gave us directions and fed. But when we left, one of the monks asked me in French (which I had studied in school) why we thought we would do better in Vietnam than the French. President Eisenhower was aware of this when he refused to rescue the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, although most of his national security advisers, including then-Vice President Nixon and the joint chief of staff, Admiral Radford, recommended it. But the Chief of Staff, General Matthew Ridgway, who prevented us from losing in Korea, helped persuade Eisenhower not to intervene because, like the monks I met, he believed that Vietnam was invincible.
Similarly, the majority of the American people did not turn against the war in Vietnam not only because there was a concept, as Bing rightly remarked, but also because of how the privileged could avoid the concept and thus leave it to the lower class. to bear most of the burden. For example, the four youngest presidents who could serve in Vietnam avoided the war and the concept in a dubious way. Bill Clinton pretended to join the Army ROTC; George W. Bush used political connections to join the Air National Guard when President Johnson made it clear that the reserve component would not be activated to fight the war; Donald Trump, of course, made his family doctor claim that he had leg spurs (Trump himself can not remember which foot); and Joe Biden claims that the asthma he had in high school prevented him from serving, even though he boasted of his athletic accomplishments while in high school.
In his analysis of why we did not win in Iraq, Bing also ignores the fact that the Bush administration falsely landed the US in war, claiming that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, Bing ignores the fact that Obama had no choice because he criticized the Obama administration for withdrawing from Iraq in 2011. He did so because the Iraqi government, which helped us install, made it clear to us in 2008 that he would not sign a Status of Forces agreement unless we agreed to withdraw completely by the end of 2011.
I saw it firsthand when I was working in the Obama campaign and in the summer of 2008 I met with Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister. When I asked him about the withdrawal agreement, he told me it was a non-negotiable claim. When I handed it to Denis McDonough, who was on the campaign with Obama and eventually became his chief of staff, he was surprised and asked me if I was sure of what I had heard. In 2009, while I was in Iraq, I discussed this with several Iraqi government officials in parliament and the executive and got the same answer. Finally, in December 2011, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki came to Washington to terminate the agreement, I and several others, including Obama’s first National Security Adviser General David Jones and former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, met with meet him. I asked him directly if there was anything President Obama could do to keep the troops in Iraq. He essentially said that Bush had reached an agreement and that the US should abide by it. At the meeting, Jones said Obama was prepared to leave 10,000 troops.
Bing also ignores the fact that the Bush administration has never publicly or privately praised Iran for its aid in Afghanistan, but has actually publicly criticized the country. I saw it myself. On 9/11 I work at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. After the attacks, the Iranian ambassador to the UN invited me to dinner and told me to let our government know that Iran hated the Taliban and would be willing to help us in Afghanistan. I passed it on to the Bush administration, and Bush’s representative at the Bonn Conference in December 2001, which established the Karzai administration, told me that the Bush administration would not succeed without the Iranians. Iran’s reward? In early 2002, Bush placed the country on the ashes of evil. It is an understatement to say that, as a result, Iran has no longer played a positive role in the region.
Finally, while Bing correctly points out that our military can never transform Afghanistan, he is wrong in arguing that we need to stay in the country indefinitely to prevent our reputation from being damaged. Many who have fought in this war of 20 years already believe that our reputation has been damaged and want us to leave before it is further damaged. Solar cost logic should not apply here.
How bad will it be if we agree to leave on May 1, as Trump agreed, and take over the Taliban, especially for women? When I visited Afghanistan in 2011, I asked a Taliban official how they would treat women if they took over. He told me not to worry – that they would not treat them worse than our allies, the Saudis.
Bing’s article should be read by anyone who believes that the US can develop and maintain democracies by using military force. However, they should keep in mind that there are some other factors that also play a role in this decision.