Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley sought to defend the Afghan War on Friday, despite the Afghanistan Papers showing systematic official lies about the failed conflict, insisting that the documents were a “mischaracterization” of the war, and that there was no unified decision to deceive the public.
Rather, the position here seems to be that hundreds of Pentagon officials took it upon themselves and each individually decided to deceive the public a little bit, culminating in a colossal lie which couldn’t be explicitly blamed on anyone.
Gen. Milley insisted the war had been a success in that there hadn’t been any specific terror attacks out of Afghanistan for the war’s duration, and particularly objected to the idea that anyone had died “in vain” in the conflict.
Gen. Milley, I will not allow my great respect for the American military be destroyed by one man's solipsistic, and arrogant rant about "no one having died in vain"; this war was simply unwinnable, and those in civilian government did not hesitate to put our brave men and women in uniform in harm's way, thinking that the Afghani people could actually be "pacified" to the point where Afghanistan's great embarrassment of resources could be expropriated, with very little "fuss" from the locals.
Their premises, to even believe that such a feat was doable, were completely unhinged from reality; and the sooner you, and your colleagues in places of high command, understand this, the better you are going to be able to advise leadership, both present and future, about the limits to what "military muscle and equipment" alone can accomplish, if you cannot change the hearts and minds of the people whose country you have just invaded, who must now live through the misery of their country's occupation.
http://news.antiwar.com/2019/12/20/top-us-general-denies-that-us-troops-died-in-vain-in-afghanistan/
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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