In your National Review article “Three Wars, No Victory – Why?” (February 18, 2021), Bing West, my former colleague at the Pentagon and Naval War College, presents a compelling case of why the US – which he argues is the most powerful country in the history of the world – has lost the big three wars it has fought in the last 50 years: Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Bing divides the blame for each of these losses between three centers – namely, the military, policy makers and the popular climate among the people of the country. He correctly argues that the policy center, or policy makers, was primarily responsible for the failures.
Although I have some experience in each of these conflicts, having served in Vietnam and visited Iraq three times and Afghanistan once, this is no match for Bing, who is one of the most courageous people I have ever met. However, I still believe that it presents a sometimes incomplete and misleading picture of why we lost these three wars.
For example, in analyzing the disaster in Vietnam, he ignores the fact that the war was fought under false pretenses. President Johnson received authorization from Congress in 1964 to begin the massive escalation in Vietnam in response to an alleged attack by the North Vietnamese on an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. But even before the Congressional investigation, it was clear to any experienced naval officer that what the government claimed to have happened was false. I remember my commander in VP-1, who had flown combat missions in World War II and Korea, telling us that the attacks did not happen in the way that was alleged. This was something that Vice Admiral James Stockdale, who was my boss and Bing 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, also stated. As well as 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 the next election.) When that came out, opposition to war among the American people also increased.
Another reason why we failed in Vietnam is that the war was never won in the first place. Bing argues that our poor military strategy from 1965 to 1968, poor political decisions and popular humor condemned the Vietnam War. These factors played a role, but in reality only added to an existing reality – a reality that became clear to me in 1966, when my colleagues and I got lost returning from a meeting with SWIFT officers in the northern part of Cameron Bay, Vietnam from the South. As we rode aimlessly, trying to find our way back to our base, we came across a Catholic monastery. A priest gave us instructions and fed us. But when we were leaving, one of the monks asked me in French (which I had studied at school) why we thought we would do better in Vietnam than in the French. President Eisenhower was aware of this when he refused to help the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, although most of his national security advisers, including then Vice President Nixon and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Radford, recommended . But the Army Chief of Staff, General Matthew Ridgway, who prevented us from losing in Korea, helped to convince Eisenhower not to intervene, because he, like the monks I met, believed that Vietnam was invincible.
Likewise, the majority of the American people turned against the Vietnam War not only because there was an enlistment, as Bing correctly points out, but because the privileged were able to avoid enlistment, thus leaving it for the lower class to endure. most of the burden. For example, the four most recent presidents who could have served in Vietnam avoided this war and military enlistment by dubious means. Bill Clinton pretended to join the Army’s ROTC; George W. Bush used political connections to join the National Air 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 bone spurs (Trump himself can’t remember which foot); and Joe Biden claimed that his asthma at school prevented him from serving, although he boasted of his athletic prowess during high school.
Likewise, in his analysis of why we did not win in Iraq, Bing ignores the fact that the Bush administration put the US into the war by falsely claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, in criticizing the Obama administration for withdrawing from Iraq in 2011, Bing ignores the fact that Obama had no choice. He did this because in 2008 the Iraqi government, which we helped to install, made it clear to us that it would not sign a Force Status Agreement unless we agreed to withdraw completely by the end of 2011.
I saw this first hand when I worked on the Obama campaign and in the summer of 2008 I met Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s foreign minister. When I asked him about the withdrawal agreement, he told me it was a non-negotiable requirement. When I relayed this to Denis McDonough, who was campaigning with Obama and ended up becoming his chief of staff, he was surprised and asked me if I was sure of what I heard. In 2009, during a visit to Iraq, I raised the matter with several Iraqi government officials in parliament and the executive branch and received the same response. Finally, in December 2011, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki came to Washington to finalize the agreement, I and several others, including Obama’s first national security adviser, General David Jones, and the future Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, we met with him. I asked him directly if there was anything that President Obama could have done to keep troops in Iraq. He basically said that Bush made a deal and that the United States must stick to it. At the meeting, Jones said that Obama was willing to leave 10,000 soldiers.
Bing also ignores the fact that the Bush administration never publicly or privately praised Iran for its help in Afghanistan, but in fact publicly criticized that nation. I saw it myself. On September 11, I was working 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 detested the Taliban and would be willing to help us in Afghanistan. I relayed this to the Bush administration, and the Bush representative at the December 2001 Bonn Conference, which established the Karzai government, told me that the Bush administration would not have been successful without the Iranians. Iran’s reward? In early 2002, Bush put the country on the axis of evil. It is an understatement to say that, as a result, Iran no longer plays a positive role in the region.
Finally, in his analysis of Afghanistan, while Bing correctly points out that our military could never transform Afghanistan, he is wrong to argue that we must remain in the country indefinitely to avoid damaging our reputation. Many of those who fought in this 20-year war already believe that our reputation is damaged and want us to leave before it is further damaged. The sunk costs logic should not be applied here.
How bad will it be if we agree to leave on May 1, as Trump agreed, and the Taliban take over, especially for women? When I visited Afghanistan in 2011, I asked a Taliban official how they would treat women if or when they came to power. He told me not to worry – that they would not treat them any worse than our allies, the Saudis.
Bing’s article should be read by all those who believe that the United States can develop and sustain democracies using military power. However, they should keep in mind that there are some other factors that also influence this decision.