June 11, 2021
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Mr. Bacevich is a veteran of the Vietnam War, a retired Army colonel, emeritus professor at Boston University, and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The author of “After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed.” He has written extensively on the misuse of American military power.
When The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers 50 years ago this week, I don’t recall giving the story much attention. As a young Army lieutenant serving in South Vietnam, I did not need a classified account of America’s reckless involvement in the war to tell me that I was participating in a misbegotten enterprise. Abundant evidence was in plain sight.
In the field, a dangerous and elusive enemy lurked. Hardly less dangerous were pathologies imported from a radicalized and bitterly divided home front: epidemic drug use, a poisonous racial climate and contempt for authority. Equally disturbing was the average G.I.’s palpably low regard for the Vietnamese people on whose behalf we were ostensibly fighting.
In the ensuing decades, my appreciation for the revelations of the Pentagon Papers has grown. The portrait of fallible policymakers at the highest levels of government rendering judgments based on little more than ill-informed conjecture, while concealing their ignorance behind a veil of secrecy, has lost little of its ability to shock.
The judgment of the Times editorial board on June 21, 1971, remains incontrovertible: “Congress and the American people were kept in the dark about fundamental policy decisions affecting the very life of this democracy.” The implications of those decisions were “deliberately distorted or withheld altogether from the public.”
To read the Pentagon Papers, as I have been doing recently, is to be struck by how oblivious senior officials were to the dubious assumptions permeating their deliberations. That the preservation of an anti-Communist South Vietnam qualified as a vital U.S. national security interest was a given. That the hostilities there formed an integral part of an existential struggle known as the Cold War was likewise taken for granted. So too was the conviction that the problem would ultimately yield to a military solution.
The sticky part was figuring out what role U.S. forces should play in achieving that solution.
To sample this odd combination of certainty and reticence, consider Lyndon Johnson’s report to President John Kennedy following Mr. Johnson’s May 1961 vice-presidential visit to Saigon.
“The battle against Communism must be joined in Southeast Asia with strength and determination to achieve success there — or the United States, inevitably, must surrender the Pacific and take up our defenses on our own shores,” he told Kennedy. These were clichés more appropriate for a speech to an American Legion convention, not a memorandum to the commander in chief. Yet for all his posturing, Johnson’s bottom line was devoid of specifics. He urged Kennedy to “proceed with a clear-cut and strong program of action” that included “a rational program to meet the threat we face in the region as a whole.”
In the summer and early fall of 1961, neither Johnson nor Kennedy was angling for U.S. combat forces to take over the fight in South Vietnam, despite assurances from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that a mere 40,000 U.S. troops would suffice to “clean up the Viet Cong threat.”
Yet the extravagant depiction of the stakes involved — surrender the Pacific? — boxed Kennedy in and would do the same to Johnson when he became president. Each in turn persuaded himself that there existed no alternative to staying the course in Vietnam, a conviction that eventually landed me and way more than 40,000 other Americans in an unwinnable war.
The road to this particular hell was paved with rosy public forecasts, which the Pentagon Papers catalog even as they document internal doubts that were ignored or suppressed. As early as May 1965, with the infusion of U.S. combat troops still in its early stages, a top Defense Department official was warning of a “widely and strongly held” sense among the public that “‘the Establishment’ is out of its mind.” Among Vietnam-era policy elites, both military and civilian, the light at the end of the tunnel, however contrived, never dimmed.
On the 50th anniversary of their release, the Pentagon Papers invite us to reflect on how little they ended up mattering. The canonical lesson of the Vietnam War was to avoid another Vietnam. But a half-century after the Pentagon Papers exposed the misguided thinking that got us into that war, delusions and dishonesty regarding the role of military power persist.
In present-day national security circles, the conviction that armed force holds the key to untangling history’s complexities remains an article of faith for many. In Vietnam, race, religion, ethnicity, ideology, geopolitics and national identity sharpened by a colonial past numbered among those complexities. While some qualified for passing mention in the Pentagon Papers, they did not budge members of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations from their insistence on aligning South Vietnam with America’s purposes.
The methods the United States employed included arming and advising South Vietnamese forces, protracted bombing of the North and having thousand of troops conduct “search and destroy” missions in the South. While some 58,000 Americans and far greater numbers of Vietnamese died as a result, none of the generals’ grand plans delivered the promised results. It was that dismal reality that prompted Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in June 1967, to commission the Pentagon Papers in the first place.
Crucially, however, the quest for the formula that would translate U.S. military might into favorable political outcomes didn’t end. Even as excerpts from the Pentagon Papers were making headlines, the United States was illegally bombing Laos and Cambodia, waging a war that Congress had not authorized and about which the American people knew little.
More such episodes of questionable legality and logic were to follow, even after the South Vietnamese government finally fell. Among the most prominent: the Reagan administration’s illegal sales of arms to Iran to illegally fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua; clandestine U.S. support for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s; Bill Clinton’s ill-conceived assault in Somalia culminating in the infamous Mogadishu firefight of October 1993; the George W. Bush administration’s manipulation of intelligence to create a pretext for invading Iraq in 2003; and Barack Obama’s embrace of “targeted killing” as an executive power.
Capping off this entire sequence of events was the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran. Much as the Kennedy administration concluded in 1963 that President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam had become expendable, so too President Donald Trump decided in January 2020 that General Suleimani should die.
Most telling of all is the American war in Afghanistan, now approaching its final stages. Documents pried loose in a three-year legal battle showed how this longest war on foreign soil in U.S. history reprises the major themes of the Pentagon Papers.
“Senior U.S. officials,” The Washington Post reported, “failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”
It was déjà vu all over again.
As was the case when the Pentagon Papers were being drafted, the authority of the commander in chief on military matters still admits to little constraint.
As citizens, we are left to hope that the inglorious results of our recent military endeavors have educated President Biden and his team to the benefits of humility and restraint in dealing with the complexities of the world. Honesty would be a welcome bonus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opin ... e=Homepage
Secrets That Were No Secret, Lessons That Were Not Learned
Re: Secrets That Were No Secret, Lessons That Were Not Learned
Biden Sends Dueling Messages on Afghanistan
The administration has sought to reassure Americans that it is ending “forever wars” while signaling to Afghans that the U.S. is not abandoning the beleaguered country.
By Eric Schmitt
July 2, 2021
WASHINGTON — To listen to the White House and Pentagon, the exit of the last American combat troops from Bagram Air Base is not the end of the mission in Afghanistan. At least that was the signal to the Afghans.
The United States military will still help Afghan forces, just by teleconference from afar. Armed Air Force drones will still hunt Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists, just from bases eight hours away in the Persian Gulf. The Biden administration still plans to provide the Afghan government more than $3 billion in security assistance, just with not as much oversight in the country to prevent corruption.
In reality, however, much has changed in the three months since President Biden ordered most of the 3,500 American troops to leave by Sept. 11. There are no more Americans on the ground to advise and assist Afghan troops. Few of the 18,000 Pentagon contractors will remain to repair Afghanistan’s air force and its fleet of American-supplied Black Hawk helicopters. Only two other NATO military allies are staying — Turkey and Britain — and most of their troops will be holed up in fortified embassy compounds or securing Kabul International Airport, that last major gateway out of the country.
Speaking on Friday, Mr. Biden underscored his administration’s dueling messages as it sought to reassure the American public that its so-called forever wars are winding down, at least militarily, while trying to convince beleaguered Afghans that the United States is not abandoning the country at a moment when intelligence analysts assess that the government could fall in as few as six months to a resurgent Taliban.
Asked whether the troop withdrawal he ordered in April was nearly finished, Mr. Biden said that some troops would remain — mainly to secure the United States Embassy in Kabul — but that “we’re on track exactly where we expected to be” on the withdrawal.
Questioned about the risks of the pullout, Mr. Biden said: “Look, we were in that war for 20 years. Twenty years.” He added, “The Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have.”
That was the same message Mr. Biden conveyed to President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan during his visit to the White House last week. Pentagon officials said on Friday that a few hundred contractors would stay through August — a couple of months longer than expected — but after that they would troubleshoot maintenance issues from afar or bring aircraft out, as needed, for major repairs in Persian Gulf countries.
Pressed by reporters to elaborate on Afghanistan, Mr. Biden cut off a questioner, saying, “I want to talk about happy things,” later citing Friday’s upbeat jobs report.
Mr. Biden remains resolute in his choice, top aides say. According to an Associated Press/NORC poll last year, only 12 percent of Americans said they were closely following news related to the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
His decision to withdraw American troops by Sept. 11 is one of the most significant of his presidency so far, a deeply personal calculation that comes “from the gut,” as one official put it. And despite the specter of gloomy intelligence reports and the likelihood the White House will confront terrible images of human suffering and loss in the coming weeks and months, Mr. Biden has vowed to press ahead regardless of the conditions on the ground.
Administration officials said at least three major factors had influenced Mr. Biden’s calculus. First was the strong likelihood that peace talks in Doha, Qatar, between the Taliban and the Afghan government would not succeed. That was largely preordained by the Trump administration’s failure to hold the Taliban accountable to the terms of a deal signed in February 2020, administration officials said.
The second major factor was that if the United States did not honor the peace agreement and left, any remaining U.S. forces would come under attack — an outcome the Taliban had generally avoided since signing the deal. Under the new scenario, American air power could keep the Taliban, as well as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, at bay, but there would be no clear political end in sight to a campaign that American commanders concluded long ago could not be won by military might alone.
Finally, American intelligence officials told Mr. Biden that the threat Al Qaeda and the Islamic State posed to the United States homeland had been greatly diminished — and was likely to take at least two years to reconstitute.
To keep that threat in check, the Pentagon already has stationed armed MQ-9 Reaper drones at bases in the Persian Gulf to keep watch. But the long distances they must travel are costly and riskier. “It’s going to be extremely difficult to do, but it is not impossible,” Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, told Congress in April.
Conditions in Afghanistan continue to worsen, prompting grim assessments from intelligence analysts as well as current and former commanders.
“Afghanistan’s army and police, with material assistance, will be able to function for a period of time,” said Karl W. Eikenberry, who commanded American forces in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, and later served as United States ambassador to Afghanistan. “But eventually, if the central government fragments and warlordism returns, and Afghanistan’s neighbors begin to support their own favorite militias, the Afghan security forces will collapse.”
Mr. Biden’s decision is also fraught with political risks at home. The president sought to defuse one of the politically volatile issues when he announced last week that his administration would begin moving thousands of Afghan interpreters, drivers and others who worked with American forces out of the country in an effort to keep them safe while they apply for entry to the United States.
“Those who helped us are not going to be left behind,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House last week.
The White House has come under heavy pressure to protect Afghan allies from revenge attacks by the Taliban and speed up the lengthy and complex process of providing them special immigrant visas. Officials said the Afghans would be relocated possibly to Guam or somewhere else with close ties to the United States, to await the processing of their visa requests to move to the United States. Many other logistical details must still be ironed out, officials said on Friday.
The departure of troops from Bagram drew criticism from Republican lawmakers who have warned that the American withdrawal from Afghanistan is a strategic blunder as the Pentagon is facing new security threats from Beijing, Moscow and Tehran.
“As our only base sandwiched between China, Russia and Iran, it’s a huge strategic asset,” Representative Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican who served in Afghanistan as an Army Green Beret, said in a Twitter message late Thursday. “Why are we just giving it away?”
“It’s by far the biggest symbol of our 20 years of blood and treasure we have expended for all veterans that have served there,” Mr. Waltz said, in what is likely to be a common refrain for Republicans going into next year’s midterm elections.
But some current and former military commanders questioned how much Afghanistan would resonate with voters.
Jeffrey J. Schloesser, a retired two-star Army general who commanded U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009, reflected on a conflict that involved three generations of his family. His father, a veteran, served as a Defense Department contractor in Afghanistan. His son served there as an Army Special Operations Forces officer.
General Schloesser, the author of a new book, “Marathon War: Leadership in Combat in Afghanistan,” expressed disappointment with Mr. Biden’s decision to withdraw American troops, and predicted that Afghanistan would devolve into civil war. But he acknowledged his views might not be widespread.
“The broader population in America has forgotten about Afghanistan unless they lost someone they know there,” General Schloesser said. “The vast majority of Americans aren’t paying attention.”
In the end, that may be what Mr. Biden is betting on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/us/p ... e=Homepage
The administration has sought to reassure Americans that it is ending “forever wars” while signaling to Afghans that the U.S. is not abandoning the beleaguered country.
By Eric Schmitt
July 2, 2021
WASHINGTON — To listen to the White House and Pentagon, the exit of the last American combat troops from Bagram Air Base is not the end of the mission in Afghanistan. At least that was the signal to the Afghans.
The United States military will still help Afghan forces, just by teleconference from afar. Armed Air Force drones will still hunt Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists, just from bases eight hours away in the Persian Gulf. The Biden administration still plans to provide the Afghan government more than $3 billion in security assistance, just with not as much oversight in the country to prevent corruption.
In reality, however, much has changed in the three months since President Biden ordered most of the 3,500 American troops to leave by Sept. 11. There are no more Americans on the ground to advise and assist Afghan troops. Few of the 18,000 Pentagon contractors will remain to repair Afghanistan’s air force and its fleet of American-supplied Black Hawk helicopters. Only two other NATO military allies are staying — Turkey and Britain — and most of their troops will be holed up in fortified embassy compounds or securing Kabul International Airport, that last major gateway out of the country.
Speaking on Friday, Mr. Biden underscored his administration’s dueling messages as it sought to reassure the American public that its so-called forever wars are winding down, at least militarily, while trying to convince beleaguered Afghans that the United States is not abandoning the country at a moment when intelligence analysts assess that the government could fall in as few as six months to a resurgent Taliban.
Asked whether the troop withdrawal he ordered in April was nearly finished, Mr. Biden said that some troops would remain — mainly to secure the United States Embassy in Kabul — but that “we’re on track exactly where we expected to be” on the withdrawal.
Questioned about the risks of the pullout, Mr. Biden said: “Look, we were in that war for 20 years. Twenty years.” He added, “The Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have.”
That was the same message Mr. Biden conveyed to President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan during his visit to the White House last week. Pentagon officials said on Friday that a few hundred contractors would stay through August — a couple of months longer than expected — but after that they would troubleshoot maintenance issues from afar or bring aircraft out, as needed, for major repairs in Persian Gulf countries.
Pressed by reporters to elaborate on Afghanistan, Mr. Biden cut off a questioner, saying, “I want to talk about happy things,” later citing Friday’s upbeat jobs report.
Mr. Biden remains resolute in his choice, top aides say. According to an Associated Press/NORC poll last year, only 12 percent of Americans said they were closely following news related to the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
His decision to withdraw American troops by Sept. 11 is one of the most significant of his presidency so far, a deeply personal calculation that comes “from the gut,” as one official put it. And despite the specter of gloomy intelligence reports and the likelihood the White House will confront terrible images of human suffering and loss in the coming weeks and months, Mr. Biden has vowed to press ahead regardless of the conditions on the ground.
Administration officials said at least three major factors had influenced Mr. Biden’s calculus. First was the strong likelihood that peace talks in Doha, Qatar, between the Taliban and the Afghan government would not succeed. That was largely preordained by the Trump administration’s failure to hold the Taliban accountable to the terms of a deal signed in February 2020, administration officials said.
The second major factor was that if the United States did not honor the peace agreement and left, any remaining U.S. forces would come under attack — an outcome the Taliban had generally avoided since signing the deal. Under the new scenario, American air power could keep the Taliban, as well as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, at bay, but there would be no clear political end in sight to a campaign that American commanders concluded long ago could not be won by military might alone.
Finally, American intelligence officials told Mr. Biden that the threat Al Qaeda and the Islamic State posed to the United States homeland had been greatly diminished — and was likely to take at least two years to reconstitute.
To keep that threat in check, the Pentagon already has stationed armed MQ-9 Reaper drones at bases in the Persian Gulf to keep watch. But the long distances they must travel are costly and riskier. “It’s going to be extremely difficult to do, but it is not impossible,” Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, told Congress in April.
Conditions in Afghanistan continue to worsen, prompting grim assessments from intelligence analysts as well as current and former commanders.
“Afghanistan’s army and police, with material assistance, will be able to function for a period of time,” said Karl W. Eikenberry, who commanded American forces in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, and later served as United States ambassador to Afghanistan. “But eventually, if the central government fragments and warlordism returns, and Afghanistan’s neighbors begin to support their own favorite militias, the Afghan security forces will collapse.”
Mr. Biden’s decision is also fraught with political risks at home. The president sought to defuse one of the politically volatile issues when he announced last week that his administration would begin moving thousands of Afghan interpreters, drivers and others who worked with American forces out of the country in an effort to keep them safe while they apply for entry to the United States.
“Those who helped us are not going to be left behind,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House last week.
The White House has come under heavy pressure to protect Afghan allies from revenge attacks by the Taliban and speed up the lengthy and complex process of providing them special immigrant visas. Officials said the Afghans would be relocated possibly to Guam or somewhere else with close ties to the United States, to await the processing of their visa requests to move to the United States. Many other logistical details must still be ironed out, officials said on Friday.
The departure of troops from Bagram drew criticism from Republican lawmakers who have warned that the American withdrawal from Afghanistan is a strategic blunder as the Pentagon is facing new security threats from Beijing, Moscow and Tehran.
“As our only base sandwiched between China, Russia and Iran, it’s a huge strategic asset,” Representative Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican who served in Afghanistan as an Army Green Beret, said in a Twitter message late Thursday. “Why are we just giving it away?”
“It’s by far the biggest symbol of our 20 years of blood and treasure we have expended for all veterans that have served there,” Mr. Waltz said, in what is likely to be a common refrain for Republicans going into next year’s midterm elections.
But some current and former military commanders questioned how much Afghanistan would resonate with voters.
Jeffrey J. Schloesser, a retired two-star Army general who commanded U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009, reflected on a conflict that involved three generations of his family. His father, a veteran, served as a Defense Department contractor in Afghanistan. His son served there as an Army Special Operations Forces officer.
General Schloesser, the author of a new book, “Marathon War: Leadership in Combat in Afghanistan,” expressed disappointment with Mr. Biden’s decision to withdraw American troops, and predicted that Afghanistan would devolve into civil war. But he acknowledged his views might not be widespread.
“The broader population in America has forgotten about Afghanistan unless they lost someone they know there,” General Schloesser said. “The vast majority of Americans aren’t paying attention.”
In the end, that may be what Mr. Biden is betting on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/us/p ... e=Homepage
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