Share this comment
The Darwinian nature of battle argues against these types of affirmative action quota based systems...when the bullets are flying downrange, they really don't care about your gender or politics, they care how you execute your battle plan (small unit to large) and how well you shoot back. It does matter, however, if you've ignored learnin…
The Darwinian nature of battle argues against these types of affirmative action quota based systems...when the bullets are flying downrange, they really don't care about your gender or politics, they care how you execute your battle plan (small unit to large) and how well you shoot back. It does matter, however, if you've ignored learning to shoot to take seminars on the correct pronoun or have recruited a bunch of people who aren't ready to run a few hundred yards under fire from cover to cover to bring defilade fire down on a position. Then...then...you get people killed.
Just a moment for Afghanistan. I did not, and do not, feel the same way about it that I did Saigon. We abandoned a lot of things on the Embassy roof in Saigon - and it was done not by us, but a portion of our government, making a waste and mockery of our blood and treasure. I can see how some might feel the same about Afghanistan, BUT they have never and will never have an advanced centralized authority or society - it will always be tribal. We weren't going to change that. To the extent we had done what we could do, hunted who we could hunt - or would hunt, based on limitations in attacking the tribal areas in Pakistan - and achieved whatever objectives we had beyond just endlessly sending raids and patrols into the countryside forever...it was time to come home.
So it was time to leave as there was no purpose without a much larger effort encompassing an entire region - which should have been done long ago, in a short time, at greater cost and energy - but it would have been over. Water under the bridge. But the decision to leave Afghanistan to itself was correct. The shame was in HOW IT WAS DONE, not the decision to leave. I attach THAT shame not to us, our nation, even our politics - but the nincompoops in charge of executing the operation. Anybody with half a brain, and an appreciation for disengaging from the enemy while in contact, knows how to collapse a perimeter to keep that kind of stuff from happening and executing an orderly withdrawal...not even under fire. That they so totally messed it up...didn't even really seem to care....is the shame of it. But it is THEIR shame, not ours.
Without quoting at length, I concur "The shame was in HOW IT WAS DONE."