Brendan R. Gallagher

I really think this is a book all Americans should read, especially all of our past, present and future leaders. This asks an important, relevant question which poses, frankly, for a thesis that many will find uncomfortable. Frankly, I don't care a damn bit if true blue "patriots" get bent out of shape. They've been too busy drinking the Kool-aid, lacking the necessary critical thinking and analytical skills, as well as any reasonable objectivity to go here. And yet these are issues I've been bringing up for a couple of decades and talking, discussing, debating, educating, recommending, etc. Donald Stoker and one other SME whose name I can't recall at the moment published a couple of books about the same time this past decade in which they posited America hasn't "won" a single "war" (since there have been no actual, technical wars since WW2, they're more appropriately "armed conflicts," with other terms used as well) SINCE WW2 (and the question of the US actually "winning" that war for the Allies is a theme for another time, although I have addressed that topic in previous reviews here). The most recent clusterf**k, of course, has been Afghanistan, where after 20 years of accomplishing little more than killing Obama (though that was in Pakistan, technically), as many are saying we're cutting and running. I disagree with that assertion. Not only did we screw up Iraq, wasting trillions as well as a total number of anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths overall, but we just fought not only our longest war in history, but also in Afghan history, which is a rather hideous statistic since Afghanistan has been largely nothing but one big battleground since the beginning of time. The second longest effort was the Soviet failure. People are wondering if China will join the land of dead empires trying to take a land that's never been beaten by any significant foe, empire or practically anyone. One has go to back to the 1750s to find an instance of anyone besides Afghans winning anything there, and I think back to the 1300s to find a so-called "empire" (though one virtually no one has heard of) who may have actually won in Afghanistan! Which says little, because aside from various Afghans winning civil wars against their countrymen, it's rarely been an actual "Country" and remains so today. People ask why the US sunk $83 Billion into "training" their military only for it to allegedly collapse in days against the Taliban. There are many variables, but one major one is doctrine. The US is STILL having trouble weaning itself from the huge land armies doctrine of Cold War Europe where we would lead NATO in defense against a massed Soviet invasion made up of tens of thousands of tanks and millions of troops. Since we should have learned about UW in Nam -- and claim we did -- and since we had to break that down into IW and AW, we have had a few units, with some of our overused special forces, able to fight small scale brush fires, for all intents and purposes, but for some reason, we persist in wanting to train "new" third world allies in military strategy designed for traditional western liberal democracies. In the case of Afghanistan, while most of our SOF, and others, knew this, it's almost unthinkable the brass couldn't get it, and that was reflected in our failed training, but Afghanistan never has been and is not a "country" in the formal sense, as I wrote earlier. It's a series of tribes sharing the same large geographical space -- no more, no less. Their allegiance is to their tribes, thus the near total inability to recruit them effectively to unite in a war against a battle hardened group of former terrorists, now a true modern army which doesn't have to divide and conquer because the tribes are already divided -- conquering is a breeze. Yet the eggheads in DC, the media and elsewhere wonder what went wrong. Ask a commander in Seal Team Five. Ask one of our British allies embedded with a different tribe. The answers are there, some of the questions are in this book. As I say when recommending this and Stoker's book, as well as discussing the topic, if you're uncomfortable or pissed off hearing we're freaking losers, especially after all of the budget going to defense, tough crap -- grow the hell up! Look at reality and while I normally agree with Admiral Stavris, I actually replied to his recent comment about looking at our mistakes, analyzing and learning from them in the recent screw up with the departure/evacuation. My response was after 70+ years, Admiral, shouldn't we have learned our lessons by now? The fact is we haven't or we wouldn't be repeating the same mistakes over and over. That's not my assertion; the facts bear that out. Again, if you don't like it, tough. Don't kill the messenger -- demand doctrine change and training change, among many other changes we should demand. It's almost unfathomable to me as to how we continue to screw up, repeat, screw up, repeat, but looking back to the 1950s, after supporting France's efforts to regain Indochina as its colony by supporting them financially and to a lesser degree, with some supplies as well, only to see them crash and burn, how in the hell could we have simply replaced them upon their departure and repeat most of the SAME EXACT MISTAKES THEY MADE, leading us to "lose" our own war in Vietnam? Shouldn't we have learned numerous lessons from their failure? Yeah, but we didn't. Why? I'm not in a position to answer that, but obviously something is rotten in Denmark (DC) and no one ever seems willing or able to correct it, the result being the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and millions of others, at a minimum. What's it going to take to end that damn cycle? Well, maybe starting with this book might provide a few good insights. So read it. Not only recommended, but essential!… (plus d'informations)