{"id":1094,"date":"2019-03-27T03:38:58","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1094"},"modified":"2019-03-27T03:38:58","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:38:58","slug":"victory-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1094","title":{"rendered":"Victory at last"},"content":{"rendered":"

National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly await the arrival of President Donald J. Trump, August 2017. CNP\/SIPA USA\/Press Association. All rights reserved. It was bloody and
\nbrutal, a true generational struggle, but give them credit. In the
\nend, they won when so many lost.<\/i><\/p>\n

James Comey was axed. Sean Spicer went
\ndown in a heap of ashes. Anthony Scaramucci crashed and burned instantaneously.
\nReince Priebus hung on for dear life but was finally canned. Seven months in,
\nSteve Bannon got the old heave-ho and soon after, his minion, Sebastian Gorka,
\nwas unceremoniously shoved out
\nthe White House door. In a downpour
\nof potential conflicts of interest and scandal, Carl Icahn bowed out. Gary Cohn
\nhas reportedly been at the edge of resignation.
\nAnd so it goes in the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Except for the generals. Think of them
\nas the last men standing. They did it.\u00a0 They took the high ground in
\nWashington and held it with remarkable panache. Three of them: National
\nSecurity Advisor Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Secretary of Defense and
\nretired Marine General John Mattis, and former head of the Department of
\nHomeland Security, now White House Chief of Staff, retired Marine General John
\nKelly stand alone, except for President Trump\u2019s own family members,
\nat the pinnacle of power in Washington.<\/p>\n

Those three generals from America\u2019s
\nlosing wars are now triumphant.\u00a0One of them is the ultimate gatekeeper
\nwhen it comes to who sees the president. All three influence
\nhis thoughts and speeches.\u00a0They are the \u201ccivilians\u201d who control the military
\nand American war policy. They, and they alone, have made the president go
\nagainst his deepest urges, as he admitted\u00a0in his address
\nto the nation on the war in Afghanistan.\u00a0(\u201cMy original instinct was to
\npull out and historically I like following my instincts.\u201d) They\u2019ve convinced
\nhim to release
\nthe military (and the CIA) from significant oversight on how they pursue their
\nwars across the Greater Middle East, Africa, and now the Philippines.
\nThey even convinced him to surround their future actions in a penumbra of
\nsecrecy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their wars, the ones that began almost
\n16 years ago and just keep morphing and spreading (along with a proliferating
\nassortment of terror groups), are now theirs alone to fight and… well, we\u2019ll
\nget to that.\u00a0But first let\u2019s step back a moment and think about what\u2019s
\nhappened since January.<\/p>\n

The winningest
\npresident and the losingest generals<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The most surprising winner of our era
\nand possibly \u2013 to put ourselves fully in the Trumpian spirit \u2013 of any era since
\nthe first protozoan stalked the Earth entered the Oval Office on January 20 and
\npromptly surrounded himself with a set of generals from America\u2019s failed wars
\nof the post-9\/11 era.\u00a0In other words, the man who repeatedly promised that
\nin his presidency Americans would win
\nto the point of tedium \u2013 \u201cWe\u2019re going to win so much, you\u2019re going to be so
\nsick and tired of winning, you\u2019re going to come to me and go \u2018Please, please,
\nwe can\u2019t win anymore\u2019\u201d\u2013 promptly chose to elevate the losingest guys in
\ntown.\u00a0If reports are to be believed, he evidently did this because of his
\nmilitary school background, his longstanding crush on General George Patton of
\nWorld War II fame (or at least the movie version
\nof him), and despite having actively avoided
\nmilitary service himself in the Vietnam years, his weak spot for four stars
\nwith tough monikers like \u201cMad Dog.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the election campaign, though a
\ngeneral of his choice led the chants
\nto \u201clock her up,\u201d Trump himself was surprisingly clear-eyed when it came to the
\nnature of American generalship in the twenty-first century.\u00a0As he put it,
\n\u201cUnder the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the generals have
\nbeen reduced to rubble, reduced to a point where it is embarrassing for our
\ncountry.\u201d\u00a0On coming to power, however, he reached into that rubble to
\nchoose his guys.\u00a0In the years before he ran, he had been no less
\nclear-eyed on the war he just extended in Afghanistan.\u00a0Of that conflict,
\nhe typically
\ntweeted in 2013, \u201cWe have wasted an enormous amount of blood and
\ntreasure in Afghanistan. Their government has zero appreciation. Let's get
\nout!\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the careers of his
\nthree chosen generals are inextricably linked to America\u2019s losing wars.\u00a0
\nThen-Colonel H.R. McMaster gained his reputation in 2005 by leading the 3rd
\nArmored Cavalry Regiment into the Iraqi city of Tal Afar and \u201cliberating\u201d it
\nfrom Sunni insurgents, while essentially inaugurating the counterinsurgency
\ntactics that would become the heart and soul of General David Petraeus\u2019s 2007 \u201csurge\u201d in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Only one small problem: McMaster\u2019s
\nmuch-publicized \u201cvictory,\u201d like so many other American military successes of
\nthis era, didn\u2019t last.\u00a0A year later, Tal Afar was \u201cawash in sectarian
\nviolence,\u201d wrote
\nJon Finer, a Washington Post<\/em> reporter who accompanied McMaster into that
\ncity.\u00a0It would be among the first Iraqi cities taken by Islamic State
\nmilitants in 2014 and has only recently
\nbeen \u201cliberated\u201d (yet again) by the Iraqi military in a US-backed campaign that
\nhas left it only partially in
\nrubble, unlike so many other fully rubblized cities in the
\nregion.\u00a0In the Obama years, McMaster would be the leader
\nof a task force in Afghanistan that \u201csought to root out the rampant corruption
\nthat had taken hold\u201d in the American-backed government there, an effort that
\nwould prove a dismal failure.<\/p>\n

Marine General Mattis led Task Force 58
\ninto southern Afghanistan in the invasion of 2001, establishing
\nthe \u201cfirst conventional US military presence in the country.\u201d He repeated the
\nact in Iraq in 2003, leading the 1st Marine Division in the US invasion of that
\ncountry. He was involved in the taking of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in 2003;
\nin the fierce fighting
\nfor and partial destruction of the city of Fallujah in 2004; and, in that same
\nyear, the bombing of what turned out to be a wedding party, not insurgents,
\nnear the Syrian border. (\u201cHow many people
\ngo to the middle of the desert… to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest
\ncivilization?\u201d was his response to the news.) In 2010, he was made head of US
\nCentral Command, overseeing the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan until 2013
\nwhen he urged
\nthe Obama administration to launch a \u201cdead of night\u201d operation to take out an
\nIranian oil refinery or power plant, his idea of an appropriate response to
\nIran\u2019s role in Iraq. His proposal was rejected and he was \u201cretired\u201d from his
\ncommand five months early. In other words, he lost his chance to set off yet
\nanother never-ending American war in the Middle East. He is known for his
\n\u201cMattisisms\u201d like this piece of advice to US
\nMarines in Iraq in 2003: \u201cBe polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill
\neverybody you meet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Retired Marine General John Kelly was
\nassistant division commander in Iraq under Mattis, who personally
\npromoted him to brigadier general on the battlefield.\u00a0(Present
\nhead of the Joint Chiefs, General Joe Dunford, was an officer in the same
\ndivision at the same time and all three reportedly remain friends.)\u00a0Though
\nKelly had a second tour of duty in Iraq, he never fought in
\nAfghanistan.\u00a0Tragically, however, one of his sons (who had also fought in
\nFallujah in 2004) died there
\nafter stepping on an improvised explosive device in 2010.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McMaster was among the earliest figures
\nin the Pentagon to begin speaking of the country\u2019s post-9\/11 wars as
\n\u201cgenerational\u201d (that is, never-ending).\u00a0In 2014, he said,<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think this war against our way
\nof life is over because some of the self-appointed opinion-makers and
\nchattering class grow \u2018war weary,\u2019 because they want to be out of Iraq or
\nAfghanistan, you are mistaken. This enemy is dedicated to our destruction. He
\nwill fight us for generations, and the conflict will move through various
\nphases as it has since 9\/11.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

In short, you could hardly pick three
\nmen more viscerally connected to the American way of war, less capable of
\nseriously reassessing what they have lived through, or more fully identified
\nwith the failures of the war on terror, especially the conflicts in Iraq and
\nAfghanistan.\u00a0When it comes to the \u201crubble\u201d of American generalship in
\nthese years, Mattis, McMaster, and Kelly would certainly be at the top of
\nanyone\u2019s list. You could
\nhardly pick three men more viscerally connected to the American way of war,
\nless capable of seriously reassessing what they have lived through, or more
\nfully identified with the failures of the war on terror, especially the
\nconflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Think of them, in fact, as the ultimate
\nsurvivors of a system that at its upper levels is not known, even in the best
\nof times, for promoting original, outside-the-box thinkers.\u00a0They are, in
\nother words, the ultimate four-star conformists because that\u2019s the character
\ntrait you need to make it to generalship in the US military.\u00a0(Original
\nthinkers and critics never seem to make it past the rank of colonel.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

And as their \u201cnew\u201d Trump-era Afghan
\npolicy indicates, when faced with their wars and what to do about them, their
\nanswer is invariably some version of more
\nof the same (with the usual, by-now-predictable results).<\/p>\n

All Hail the Generals!<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Now, let\u2019s take one more step back from
\nthe situation at hand, lest you imagine that President Trump\u2019s acts, when it
\ncomes to those generals, are unique to our time.\u00a0Yes, two retired generals
\nand one still active in posts previously (with the rarest
\nof exceptions) reserved for civilians do represent something new in American
\nhistory.\u00a0Still, this Trumpian moment should be seen as the culmination of,
\nnot a departure from, the policies of the two previous administrations.<\/p>\n

In these years, America\u2019s generals have
\nfailed everywhere except in one place, and that just happens to be the only
\nplace that truly matters.\u00a0Call Afghanistan a \u201cstalemate\u201d
\nas often as you want, but almost 16 years after the US military loosed the
\npower of \u201cthe finest
\nfighting force the world has ever known\u201d (aka \u201cthe greatest
\nforce for human liberation the world has ever known\u201d), the Taliban
\nare ascendant
\nin that benighted land and that\u2019s the definition of failure,
\nno matter how you tote things up. Those generals have indeed been losers in
\nthat country, as they and others have been in Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and
\nsomeday undoubtedly Syria (no matter what immediate victories they might chalk
\nup).\u00a0In only one place did their generalship work effectively; in only one
\nplace have they truly succeeded; in only one place could they now conceivably
\nproclaim \u201cvictory at last!\u201d<\/p>\n

That place is, of course, Washington,
\nD.C., where they are indeed the last men standing and, in Trumpian terms,
\nabsolute winners.<\/p>\n

In Washington, their generalship has
\nbeen anything but rubble.\u00a0It\u2019s always been another kind of more \u2013 more of
\nwhatever they wanted, from money to surges to ever-greater power and
\nauthority.\u00a0In Washington, they\u2019ve been the winners ever since President
\nGeorge W. Bush launched his Global War on Terror.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What they couldn\u2019t do in Baghdad, Kabul,
\nTripoli, or anywhere else across the Greater Middle East and Africa, they\u2019ve
\ndone impressively in our nation\u2019s capital. In years when they unsuccessfully
\nbrought the full power of the greatest arsenal on the planet to bear on enemies
\nwhose weaponry cost the price of a pizza,
\nthey continued to rake in
\nbillions of dollars in Washington. In fact, it\u2019s reasonable to argue that the
\nlosing conflicts in the war on terror were necessary prerequisites for the
\nwinning budgetary battles in that city. Those never-ending conflicts \u2013 and a
\nmore generalized (no pun intended) fear of (Islamic) terrorism heavily promoted
\nby the national security state \u2013 have driven funding success to staggering
\nlevels in the nation\u2019s capital, perhaps the single issue on which Repubicans
\nand Democrats have seen eye to eye in this period. In fact, it\u2019s reasonable to argue that the losing conflicts in the war
\non terror were necessary prerequisites for the winning budgetary battles in
\nthat city.<\/p>\n

In this context, Donald Trump\u2019s decision
\nto surround himself with \u201chis\u201d generals has simply brought this reality more
\nfully into focus.\u00a0He\u2019s made it clear why the term \u201cdeep state,\u201d often used
\nby critics of American war and national security policies, inadequately
\ndescribes the situation in Washington in this century.\u00a0That term brings up
\nimages of a hidden state-within-a-state that controls the rest of the
\ngovernment in some conspiratorial fashion. The reality in Washington today is
\nnothing like that. Despite both its trove of secrets and its desire to cast a
\nshadow of secrecy over government operations, the national security state hasn\u2019t
\nexactly been lurking in the shadows in these years.<\/p>\n

In Washington, whatever the Constitution
\nmay say about civilian control of the military, the generals \u2013 at least at
\npresen \u2013 control the civilians and the deep state has become the
\nall-too-visible state. In this context, one thing is clear, whether you\u2019re
\ntalking about the country\u2019s panoply
\nof \u201cintelligence\u201d agencies or the Pentagon, failure is the new success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And for all of this, one thing continues
\nto be essential: those \u201cgenerational struggles\u201d in distant lands.\u00a0If you
\nwant to see how this works in a nutshell, consider a single line from a recent piece
\non the Afghan War by New York Times<\/em> reporter Rod Nordland.\u00a0\u201cEven
\nbefore the president\u2019s [Afghan] speech, the American military and Afghan
\nleaders were laying long-term plans,\u201d Nordland points out and, in that context,
\nadds in passing, \u201cThe American military has a $6.5-billion plan to make the
\nAfghan air force self-sufficient and end its overreliance on American air power
\nby 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think for a moment about just that
\nrelatively modest part (a mere $6.5 billion!) of the US military\u2019s latest plans
\nfor a more-of-the-same future in Afghanistan.\u00a0As a start, we\u2019re already
\ntalking about six more years of a war that began in October 2001, was
\nessentially an extension of a previous
\nconflict fought there from 1979 to 1989, and is already the longest war
\nin American history.\u00a0In other words, the idea of a \u201cgenerational
\nstruggle\u201d there is anything but an exaggeration.<\/p>\n

Recall as well that, in January 2008, US
\nBrigadier General Jay Lindell, then-commander of the Combined Air Power
\nTransition Force in Afghanistan, was projecting
\nan eight-year US
\nplan that would leave the Afghan air force fully staffed, supplied,
\ntrained, and \u201cself-sufficient\u201d by 2015.\u00a0(In 2015, Rod Nordland would check
\nout that air force and find it
\nin a \u201cwoeful state\u201d of near ruin.)<\/p>\n

So in 2023, if that full $6.5 billion is
\nindeed invested in — perhaps the more fitting phrase might be squandered on \u2013
\nthe Afghan air force, one thing is a given: it will not be
\n\u201cself-sufficient.\u201d\u00a0After all, 16 years later with not $6.5 billion but
\nmore than $65 billion
\nappropriated by Congress and spent on the training of the Afghan security
\nforces, they are now taking terrible
\ncasualties, experiencing horrendous desertion rates, filled with
\n\u201cghost\u201d personnel, and anything but self-sufficient.\u00a0Why imagine something
\ndifferent for that country\u2019s air force $6.5 billion and six years later?<\/p>\n

In America\u2019s war on terror, such things
\nshould be considered tales foretold, even as the losing generals of those
\nlosing wars strut their stuff in Washington. Elsewhere on the planet, the US
\nmilitary\u2019s plans for 2020, 2023, and beyond will undoubtedly be yet more landmarks
\non a highway to failure.\u00a0Only in Washington do such plans invariably work
\nout. Only in Washington does more of the same turn out to be the ultimate
\nformula for success.\u00a0Our losing wars, it seems, are a necessary backdrop
\nfor the ultimate winning war in our nation\u2019s capital. So all hail America\u2019s
\ngenerals, mission accomplished!<\/p>\n

This piece is reposted from\u00a0TomDispatch.com\u00a0with that site's permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly await the arrival of President Donald J. Trump, August 2017. CNP\/SIPA USA\/Press Association. All rights reserved. It was bloody and brutal, a true generational struggle, but give them credit. In the end, they won when so many lost. James Comey…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}