Considering Why We Lost

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In his high profile book, Why We host, Lieutenant General (Retired) Daniel Bolger argues the US Army stayed too long in the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters, becoming mired in wars it was ill-equipped to fight. This commentary challenges Bolger's thesis, arguing different strategies could have produced better outcomes. The US Army will not, in the future, as in the past, be able to pick the kinds of wars it fights; it must be prepared to fight the wars that the President and Congress call on it to fight. ********** Daniel Bolger begins his book Why We Dost, with a jarring opening sentence: am a United States Army General, and I lost the Global War on Terrorism. It is an mea culpa, one that puts the reader off balance even as he/she is struggling to know what to make of the tide. Who is we, exactly? The US Army, the US military and its Coalition partners, the United States? Does Bolger speak for all of them? Clearly he does not, but this first impression puts one on guard. Is this hubris or humility? The answer, it turns out, is complex. Bolger, who retired as a lieutenant general, had a long career in a US Army that repeatedly reinvented itself to meet changing global demands. Born in 1957, he graduated from the Citadel, and holds a PhD in History from the University of Chicago. In the latter years of his career he held several key posts including Commanding General, Coalition Military Assistance Training Team, Multinational Security Transition Command, Iraq, and Commanding General 1st Cavalry Division, Iraq, 2009-2010. Between 2011 and 2013 he was in charge of the US-NATO mission training the Afghan army and police. The author of several books including Dragons at War, Bolger is at his best when describing fast-moving, intricate events on the battlefield. He pulls readers into the middle of these tactical actions, allowing them to feel the dramatic nature of combat, and the stressful split-second choices it forces upon its participants. However, Why We Lost wades directly into a debate over the purpose and future of the US Army; this debate has been raging for years now, but it is crucially important, not least because it will have a direct impact on the way the Army plans, trains, educates, and equips itself for the future. The debate deserves sustained attention and vigorous intellectual engagement. Bolger makes his own view clear: he believes the United States should have left Afghanistan and Iraq as quickly as possible after the major combat phase ended in each theater. The US Army is designed for rapid, overwhelming strikes; counterinsurgency and nation-building are, in his view, swamps that suck their victims in and consume them. At points in the text Bolger seems willing to concede counterinsurgency and nation-building may work in situations where the state conducting them is willing to stay forever. But that phrasing is hardly the way one would describe such a strategy if one were seeking to sell it. Principally, Bolger regrets that senior officers did not push the case for leaving earlier; their reluctance to give this option a full endorsement was, he believes, a collective failure on their part. Bolger states the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq ended up pitting American soldiers against enemies who embraced hit-and-run tactics and opportunism, and who melted into the civilian population. Counterinsurgency environments, in his view, lure good men and women into a moral mire; one should not be surprised, therefore, by instances of battlefield excess and even atrocity. Bolger has no issue with enhanced interrogation techniques, and has little time for counterinsurgency principles that seek to limit civilian casualties; indeed, he sniffs at the odd Zen-like principles of Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, and describes General Stanley McChrystal's tactical directive in Afghanistan as handwringing on paper. For Bolger, protracted wars have other disadvantages, not least of which is they subject the Army to Congressional delegations, the vagaries and shifting sands of domestic and presidential politics, the intrusion of defense analysts, and--worst of all--the prying eyes and selfish intentions of the media. …