Military leaders failed to properly account for their own efforts, misled the public, and then racked up cushy paychecks after the war. They deserve to be punished.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told
Congress in June that he wanted to understand “white rage,” why “thousands of
people” tried “to assault this building and … overturn the Constitution of the
United States of America.”
If Milley really wants to understand the “rage” of the American
people he should start by asking why he and his fellow generals can’t win any
wars. As a Marine Corps
officer who served at the tail end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I saw
firsthand the rapid ideological transformation pervading the military in the
wake of these disasters in the Middle East.
Unable to win wars overseas,
the military’s leaders went “woke.” Currying ideological favor is
easier than trying to end insurgencies. It is also necessary if military
leaders want to keep the gravy train of taxpayer funding. Donald Trump’s America
First foreign policy and his devastating critique of George Bush and Barack
Obama in the run-up to the 2016 election put the military-industrial complex on
high alert. Trump was pushing the American right-wing away from the expensive
and unending foreign interventions the military-industrial complex needed in
order to justify its existence.
For too
long, America’s generals have relied on a “stab in the back” thesis to justify
their failure on the battlefield. The narrative set in after Vietnam and has
calcified today. Former national security adviser and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
tweeted on July 8 in
regards to the sweeping march of the Taliban that the “US media is finally reporting
on the transformation of Afghanistan after their disinterest and defeatism
helped set conditions for capitulation and a humanitarian catastrophe.”
McMaster’s attempt to deflect blame for military failure on an
insufficiently obsequious media is unacceptable. He and his fellow generals
knew full well that Afghanistan was unstable and that our strategy wasn’t
working. Instead of speaking up, they lied to the public and then jumped into
the private sector to reap the reward of misbegotten trust.
Milley and his fellow generals deserve, richly, to feel the full
weight of the American people’s anger. For 20 years, these leaders lied
consistently to the American people and their political masters about the wars
in the Middle East. In December 2019, Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post
published a devastating series of articles on America’s failure in Afghanistan.
Using 600 “lessons learned” interviews with top military staff and diplomatic
personnel collected by the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan
Reconstruction (SIGAR), Whitlock illustrated just how pervasive the gut rot in
America’s military really was.
Milley himself claimed,
in Kabul in 2013, that “[The Afghan] army and … police force have been very,
very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day.” He was
lying. More than 60,000 Afghan police and military were killed during our
occupation compared to just 42,000 alleged Taliban. Afghanistan’s military and
government were utterly corrupt. American officials, in private admitted that
at least 40 percent of the $103 billion in reconstruction funds spent in
Afghanistan went into the hands of insurgents, Taliban, and corrupt “allied”
warlords.
If the generals knew this and said nothing to the people, they
deserve to be excoriated. If they didn’t know, they should have never been
placed in positions of responsibility in the first place.
Instead of profiles in courage, America’s military leaders deserve
profiles in grifting. Current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made $7 million
once leaving the service. Gen. James Mattis is reportedly worth $5 million,
including $150,000 annual payouts from Theranos for serving on their board.
Theranos was a blood-testing company indicted for fraud. Not a single senator
asked Mattis about the connection at his confirmation hearing as secretary of
defense. Gen. David Petraeus, after leaving the CIA in disgrace after
revelations of leaking classified information to his mistress and personal
biographer Paula Broadwell, went on to a successful career in academia, public
speaking, and private equity. His net worth is estimated at $2 million.
The generals lied, America lost, and the people got looted.
We need accountability. The American people need a full accounting
of the military mission to Afghanistan. Only 10 percent of the names of the 600
interviews conducted by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
Reconstruction who gathered the “Afghanistan papers” have been released. That
needs to change.
Congress should create an Afghanistan War commission. The House and
Senate Select Committees on Intelligence should use their declassification
authority to shine a spotlight on the Afghanistan papers in full. Every CENTCOM
and ISAF commander should be required to testify in public on the war and their
role in the disaster. Spending a trillion dollars and 2,300 lives without any
serious attempt at accountability is incompatible with the republican form of
government.
Those military leaders who failed to properly account for their
own efforts, mislead the public, and then racked up cushy paychecks after the
war deserve to be punished. Generals who lose wars should lose their pensions.
At the very least. It isn’t right for thousands of America’s sons and daughters
to lose life and limb in service of idiotic policy goals while their leaders
get rich.
If current congressional leaders won’t lead the charge for
accountability, then patriots outside the swamp should. Joe Kent, who is
currently running for Congress in Washington state, is a former Green Beret who
deployed 11 times to the Middle East and lost his wife fighting ISIS. Many
combat veterans from the Middle East have become increasingly critical of the
foreign policy they implemented. Those, like Kent, who served at the tip of the
spear are in the perfect position to demand answers from those doing the
wielding.
Without accountability, a republic falls. America’s generals
deserve the cleansing fire.
Josiah
Lippincott is a student of politics at Hillsdale College. He is a republican,
in the best sense.
