The United States dishonored tradition, genetics, and the position of women in the world, by removing the ban on their being able to serve in combat on this day in 2013.
We don't usually post news stories that are only a decade old, but this is a socially significant story that resulted in the same trend being followed in most, but not all (maybe), Western armies. It has not been a success, which is something that isn't supposed to be admitted at all costs.
Since the change, the percentage of women in the military, 15.6%, really has not gone up much. Indeed, only about 1%. This isn't really surprising as the role of soldier is frankly a male one with strong evolutionary biological components. Moreover, on this note, it's worth noting that most position in the U.S. military are not combatant positions and have not been since some point prior to the Second World War. Most combat troops, therefore, remain men.
We have a long dormant thread on this, which we'll now get around to completing, but the simple facts of the matter have been that physical standards have been relaxed, formally or informally, to accommodate women's generally weaker physical strength, sexual assault is a persistent problem for female military members which has defied efforts to address it, the close mixing of young men and women in roles in which they're much more exposed than normal has lead to frat house type of disciplinary problems, and accommodating the female body's natural cycles and roles has been acclimated to only because the US has not fought a war like the one going on in Ukraine since at least the Vietnam War, if not World War Two.
Socially, the only area in which those in the West seemingly will acknowledge biological differences are in sports, which interestingly are trivial, whereas war is not, even though much of the same considerations genderwise come into play.
Also on this day, a Japanese Coast Guard ship engaged a Taiwanese activist ship in the Senkaku Islands dispute
Russian police killed thirteen rebels in Vedeno District, Chechnya. The Chechins are officially allied Russia in the current war in Ukraine, although a rebel group is fighting with the Ukrainians.
Note: The other day I did a long post on clothing standards. In pasting together a couple of other lingering posts for a combined new topic (the one on retirement) I ran across this post. Well, bummer, I just posted this one:
This one dates back to some time prior to May, given one of the references in it.
Well, I'll run it anyway.
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As a Wyoming lawyer, but a lawyer, I've watched the slow decline in clothing standards while participating in it.
At my first day of work in 1990 I reported to work wearing a double-breasted Brooks Brothers suit. The first partner who came in was wearing wool khaki trousers and a blue blazer, and he was dressed down. He told me that I didn't have to wear a suit every day.
For years and years, however, I normally wore a tie and clothing appropriate for a tie. Then COVID 19 hit.
For much of the prior spike of the disease (we're in a spike now, of the unvaccinated, but of course the entire state disregarding that) I kept coming in the office. I was often the only one there when we were at the point where the staff didn't have to come in. I pretty much quit dressing in office dress at the time as there wasn't much of a reason to do it. Nobody was coming in, I was there by myself, what the heck.
I've not made it back to normal, and not everyone else has, either.
And of course normal in 2019 was not the same thing it was in 1999, or 2009. We'd already slid down the dressing scale in the back of the office, where I am. I never used to wear blue jeans in the office, but by 2019 I already was a fair amount. Starting with COVID 19, I am all the time.
One of the things about that is that in 2019 I already had a selection of older dress clothes that were wearing out, I hadn't replaced. Probably the inevitability of their demise would have caused me to replace them on in to 2020. But I didn't have to. Additionally, the long gap in time meant that I pretty much didn't do anything about the fact I'm down to two suits now.
Two suits isn't much if you are a trial lawyer.
Well, running up to the trial, I was going to go down to Denver and get new ones. But I ran out of time. I still haven't done it.
I need to.
I'll confess that part of my reluctance to get new suits is that I'm 58 years old. I don't wear suits daily at work, and I'm not one of those guys who is going to claim "I'm going to work until I'm 80". Any new suit I get now will still be in fighting shape when I'm 68, and that's reasonably enough, but to my cheap way of thinking, emphasized by the fact that I have two kids in college, its something that is both easy for me to put off, and in the back of my mind I tend to think "maybe I won't really need those if . . . "
Well, I probably better remedy that.
Prior to the Second World War, Stalin had many of the USSR's top generals murdered. Some, who were lucky enough to escape murder, were basically cashiered. Some of those saw revived careers during World War Two, although why a person who had been lucky enough to escape a bullet in the back of the head would later work for the executioner is a pretty open question.
In 2015 Putin fired nineteen generals.
I wonder if they're missed? Maybe there's so many, it doesn't matter.
He just fired eight more.
Two, of course, died in combat within the last couple of weeks, joining 4,000 other Russians killed in action.
Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History in the Making: January 6, 2014, L...:Wyoming History in the Making: January 6, 2014, Liz Cheney drops out of U.S. Senate race.
Liz Cheney dropped out of the primary campaign for the U.S. Senate citing a health concern within her family. While some rumors indicate that one of her children has developed diabetes, always a serious disease and a particularly worrisome one in children, no official news has disclosed what that concern is.
Cheney, the daughter of former controversial Vice President Dick Cheney, mounted a controversial historic challenge of popular incumbent Mike Enzi. Seeking to find a ground to stand against Enzi, she tacked to the right of Cheney in a campaign which drew a lot of attention, but at the time of her withdrawal was clearly failing.
While an internal party challenge to a sitting incumbent member of Congress from Wyoming isn't unusual, one that is such a serious effort is. It is undoubtedly the most expensive such effort ever mounted in the state, and it started stunningly early. While Cheney failed to gain enough adherents by this stage to make her primary election likely, she did polarize the GOP in the state, which seems to be emerging from a long period of internal unity, and which also seems to be beginning to move away from the Tea Party elements within it, much like the national party is. This could be the beginning of an interesting political era within the state or at least within the state's GOP.
It also served to bring up distinct arguments about who is entitled to run in Wyoming, with Liz Cheney's campaign apparently badly underestimating the degree of state identity born by many Wyomingites. Voters appeared to not accept Cheney as a Wyomingite based upon her long absence from the state and appear to have also misinterpreted Wyoming's long re-election cycle for her father as a species of deep person admiration, rather than an admiration of effectiveness. Late in the campaign she was forced to introduce television advertisements which did nothing other than to point out her family's connection (through her mother, her father was born in Nebraska and spent his early years there) to the state and which were silent on her career as a Virginia lawyer married to a man who is still a Virginia lawyer.
All in all, this early primary effort will likely remain a fairly unique historical episode in the state's history, but potentially one with some long term impacts.
Ready or not, and probably not, the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has entered the state and infections are rapidly rising, concentrated among those who have not received a vaccination.
The state health officer has asked for Wyomingites to mask back up indoors in areas of moderate to high transmission, which includes Laramie and Natrona Counties.
In Colorado, certain counties have been pointed out as areas of rapidly rising infections as well, including Denver County, where the recent Major League Baseball game and a concert are now regarded as superspreader events.
As a background to all of this, it's very clear that the global population is nowhere near the "herd immunity" level which is necessary to render COVID 19 extinct. Perhaps this isn't too surprising, given the monumental nature of the effort necessary to achieve it, but what is surprising is that the developed world hasn't achieved it and the United States is clearly lagging far behind. This, too, comes at a point in time at which it nearly looked as if success had been achieved.
In the US a strong feature of the ongoing pandemic is a refusal of a certain part of the population to receive the vaccination that prevents it, this making the disease cross over from one which lurks ready to strike anyone to one which at this point is a preventable disease. Preventable disease itself has become the hallmark of modern American medical situations, in that most of the diseases that are real killers in the US are actually ones that are preventable.
Future historians and sociologist will study this in depth to attempt to determine what happened here. We'll leave that for the time being, but what we would note is that the culture of the pandemic has really changed. For the vaccinated the refusal to get the vaccine is absolutely baffling. Many of those not vaccinated cite personal freedom as the basis of their views, but personal freedoms have always yielded in the United States to public emergencies with examples simply too numerous to mention. Given this, at this point, many public entities are simply done with allowing for personal choice and have determined to make life difficult for those not getting vaccinated, up to and including firing those who refuse to receive vaccines. The Federal Government is an all out effort to vaccinate its servants who remain unvaccinated, and President Biden is about to order the military to be fully vaccinated, something it amazingly has not implemented yet.
While it's a grim prognostication, in my view it's too late. Whatever the hesitancy is caused by, we're going to be in for a third wave of the pandemic. Many of the victims this time, indeed most of them, will be vaccination hold outs. If the US achieves herd immunity, which is unlikely, it'll be through the rapid spread of the Delta variant of the disease among that population, which would be a tragic and lethal way to achieve it. Having said that, and seemingly unnoticed by the unvaccinated, a growing bitter resentment against them by the vaccinated is really building with the distinct view that the unvaccinated are being lethally selfish. With that being the case, there are now open comments in some quarters about simply letting the unvaccinated go ahead and risk death without sympathy from anyone else. There is also building support for private employers to require vaccinations of employees.
The great added problem all of this is creating is that there is now a very real risk that the disease will evolve a vaccine resistant strain, setting everything back. If that occurs, and my guess is that this is now inevitable, all the progress to date will be lost, and we'll return to the strict restrictions, and stricter, that were only recently lifted. There will be enormous resistance to doing so, but a disease that's now killed 600,000 Americans will be in the gate to double that death toll, potentially, and the next public health crisis that results will be at least as severe as the current one. My guess is we're mere weeks away from such a strain emerging somewhere.
In terms of the "somewhere", there are still vast reaches of the globe were very few are vaccinated and wish to be. This is also a massive problem. Whereas in the United States the disease is circulating among those who, for the most part, could avoid it if they wished to, in the Third World it's circulating at a largely unknown rate among those who would avoid it if they could, but can't.
As noted, this will be a source for a great amount of study in the future. How did a country which was a scientific and medical leader in the mid 20th Century end up one in which medicine was so disregarded? Reading about it will be fascinating for future students of human behavior and history. Living it, however, and seeing those dying in it, is quite a bit different.
August 1, 2021
The producers of a Clifford The Big Red Dog movie have pulled its release due to the Delta variant surge.
August 2, 2021
Dr. Fauci warned of more pain and suffering ahead, but didn't foresee shutdowns on the basis that there were sufficient numbers of vaccinated people to avoid them.
Senator Barrasso argued the CDC should be sued and found liable for malpractice, and urged people to get vaccinated.
August 3, 2021
And here we have a current, sobering, look at how the globe is doing in terms of vaccination progress.
Senator Lindsay Graham reports he has a break through case of COVID 19.
As can be seen, the US, in spite of vaccine resistance, is doing pretty well. It needs to do better. Canada, which was having problems with vaccination rates for a while, has pulled head of the pack in terms of major nations. Not noted on this chart, some small countries and ones with very unified governmental structures have achieved 100% vaccination. The US, given the amount of vaccine it has, could rank right up there with Canada, but the curious political season, etc., has frustrated that. Nonetheless, the US just hit 70% initial vaccination, so it's getting there, and the recent outbreak of the Delta variant has seemed to spark an increase in first time vaccinations.
In the Third World, however, vaccination rates are a disaster due to lack of vaccine. And given that, new variants of the disease are undoubtedly evolving.
August 4, 2021
As posted on another thread, the CDC has reimposed the moratorium on evictions.
August 5, 2021
Governor Gordon announced that he will not impose a mask requirement on schools this upcoming school year, leaving any such move to local districts.
Outside perhaps of Teton County, there is no political will for such a requirement, and therefore it will not occur.
Local hospitalizations have climbed back to the rate they were at this past January.
Japan is expanding its Covid restrictions. China is reimposing its Draconian closures on some areas within its borders.
August 11, 2021
The University of Wyoming has reinstated a mask mandate.
Hawaii has reinstated restrictions. Oregon is imposing indoor mask requirements.
August 17, 2021
Governor Gordon has indicated Wyoming will not being intervening in COVID in any fashion in spite of the increased numbers.
While not put this way, the politics of events are such that the state simply isn't going to act no matter how bad the spread of the Delta variant becomes. While there's a chance one or two counties might, it's only a chance.
The Governor's office itself was shut down recently due to a COVID infection. The question does remain on whether some agencies with a high degree of independence might act on their own, but so far there is no hint that they shall.
In contrast, a single case has sent New Zealand back into a lockdown.
August 18, 2021
Wyoming's COVID death rate returned to the level it was in February.
New Mexico has put a mask mandate in place.
Pope Francis urged the unvaccinated to get vaccinations. This came in the form of an advertisement for the US Ad Council backing vaccines.
Given this, perhaps it should be noted that Cardinal Raymond Burke, a highly respected and conservative Catholic Bishop, has been hospitalized for COVID 19. Cardinal Burke has been a critic of the vaccination efforts for various reasons and has somewhat gone from a respected critic of Pope Francis to a slightly sidelined critic whose views on some things bordered on becoming extreme.
August 21, 2021
Vaccination rates in Wyoming are now dramatically rising. So are infections, but this seems to have gotten the message through to a lot of people on vaccination.
August 28, 2021
Teton County has imposed a mask mandate.
September 1, 2021
Hot Springs County's schools are going virtual for thirteen days due to a COVID spike.
The National Guard is assisting clinics in Billings, Montana, due to a spike there. The Idaho National Guard has been called out in that state for the same purpose.
Anti-vaxxers shut down a mobile vaccination clinic in Georgia.
September 2, 2021
Governor Gordon indicated Wyoming will not impose a mask mandate.
As a practical matter, there simply exists no political will to do this in the state at this point in time.
On a personal note, I now know one (unvaccinated) individual who has died of the Delta variant and another (unvaccinated) person who is going to, ages 60 and 40 respectively.
September 3, 2021
30% of the patients at Casper's Wyoming Medical Center are in the hospital due to COVID 19. Most are under 65.
The school district will require individuals out of work due to COVID to take the time from their sick leave.
September 5, 2021
The hospital in Sweetwater County opened an additional wing to handle the influx of COVID 19 patients.
September 9, 2021
President Biden has asked OSHA to mandate that employers with over 100 employees be mandated to require those employees to have COVID 19 vaccinations. He's also signed an executive order which will require Federal contractors to have COVID 19 vaccinations.
Over 100,000,000 Americans will be covered by the orders.
Governor Gordon, probably sensing more the wind where he lives than giving expression to his own opinions, or at least I suspect, noted the following:
Governor Gordon Statement Opposing Biden Administration's Vaccine Mandates
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Mark Gordon has issued the following statement in response to today's announcement by the Biden Administration mandating COVID-19 vaccinations:
“The Biden Administration’s announcement to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations or weekly testing for private businesses is an egregious example of big government overreach.
Our Constitution was written and fought for to protect our liberties as American citizens. This administration’s latest pronouncement demonstrates its complete disregard for the rule of law and the freedoms individuals and private companies enjoy under our Constitution. In Wyoming, we believe that government must be held in check.
I have asked the Attorney General to stand prepared to take all actions to oppose this administration’s unconstitutional overreach of executive power. It has no place in America. Not now, and not ever.”
This puts Attorney General Bridget Hill in the position of filing doomed litigation, or litgation that will be moot by the time it is taken up, but as a posturing matter, this no doubt really doesn't matter.
The Northern Arapaho Tribe, taking the opposite approach, is mandating that its employees be vaccinated.
Los Angeles' school district, the second largest in the nation, is requiring vaccinations for indivdiuals age 12 and up.
September 10, 2021
Laramie County's school district has mandated that students wear masks indoors.
September 11, 2021
France has banned unvaccinated U.S. tourists from entering the country.
The CDC released a study that the unvaccinated were 4.5 times more likely to get COVID 19 and 11 times more likely to die.
September 15, 2021
The legislature is apparently considering a special session to consider the Administration's COVID 19 mandates.
This would really be an odd exercise as the one that the legislature would be likely to be the most upset about, the OSHA entry into vaccination requirements, hasn't come into effect yet and is extremely likely to be tested in court before it does. Anything the legislature does will come up against the Supremecy Clause of the U.S. Constitution and therefore be ineffective, if it goes into effect, and put the state into a fight with the Administration where it can't win, but where it can end up spending money that it doesn't have. It'll also serve to really fire up polarization in an area, and era, in which everything is already extremely polarized.
September 17, 2021
The University of Wyoming is extending its mask mandate through the fall.
September 21, 2021
The Pfizer accounted that its vaccination is safe for children 5 through 11 years of age.
The number of Americans who have died of COVID 19 has supassed the number who died from the 1918 Influenza, a number which must be tempered i consideration if we take into account that the country had about 1/3d of its current population at the time, meaning that the 1918 flu was still far more devestating, at least so far.
The school nurse in the Pine Bluffs school district resigned after that district's board determined to continue to allow children exposed to COVID 19 to attend school, as long as they wore masks. Citing the act and its impact on her professionally and personally, she resigned.
September 22, 2021
Governor Activates Wyoming National Guard to Provide Hospital Assistance
September 21, 2021CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Wyoming’s hospitals have sought additional support to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge in hospitalized patients. There are approximately 200 people with COVID-19 in Wyoming hospitals today, which is near the peak number the state has seen during the pandemic. Governor Mark Gordon has activated guardsmen who have stepped forward to provide temporary assistance to hospitals throughout the state.
Governor Gordon has called approximately 95 Soldiers and Airmen to State Active Duty orders, assigned to hospital locations at 24 different sites within 17 Wyoming cities. They will serve to augment current hospital and Wyoming Department of Health staff to help ease workloads imposed upon them due to large numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
“I am grateful to the members of our Wyoming National Guard for once again answering the call to provide assistance in our hospitals during this surge,” Governor Gordon said. “Our Guard members truly are Wyoming’s sword and shield, and their commitment to our state is something for which every Wyoming citizen can be thankful.”
Guard members’ responsibilities will include: assisting in environmental cleanup in hospital facilities; food and nutrition service; COVID-19 screening; managing personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies; and other support tasks. Some will also be trained to administer COVID-19 tests.
“The Delta variant has overwhelmed the medical institutions of states across this country. Our state is no different with most hospitals at or near capacity,” said Col. David Pritchett, director of the joint staff for the Wyoming National Guard. “The Soldiers and Airmen of the Wyoming National Guard are proud to jump back in to provide much needed assistance to our communities as we continue to battle the effects of COVID-19.”
The orders for guardsmen will be 14-30 day rotations, with the potential to extend beyond that, up until Dec. 31. The numbers and locations of guardsmen may change based on hospital needs.
--END--
September 24, 2021
In the reverse of the seeming norm, a lawsuit has been filed in Montana seeking to overturn a law there which probhibits employers from mandating vaccinations and masks.
October 8, 2021
120 American children have lost at least one parent due to a COVID 19 death.
October 9, 2021
Casper's ICU is full.
More Americans have died in 2021 of COVID 19 than in 2021 at this point.
A female student in Laramie was suspended for refusing to wear a mask and then arrested as she refused to leave school grounds.
News anchor Cheryl Hackett was terminated from KCWY for refusing to adhere to her employer, Gray Media's, vaccine mandate. She is the second person in a Wyoming Gray Media outlet to be terminated for this reason in a week.
October 13, 2021
October 13, 2021
Governor Gordon Further Prepares Legal Challenge of Federal Overreach on Vaccine Mandates
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Mark Gordon is taking action to oppose President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The Governor and the Attorney General continue to prepare the State’s legal challenge to the threat of the Biden Administration’s proposed vaccine mandates, when they are finalized. It should be noted that the Biden Administration has yet to issue any specific policies that can be challenged in court.
“Four weeks ago, when the President issued his announcement regarding vaccine mandates, I immediately instructed Attorney General Hill to prepare for legal action to oppose this unconstitutional overreach,” Governor Gordon said. “Attorney General Hill has begun that mission and is continuing to strengthen alliances, improve potential arguments, and consider appropriate strategies.”
Governor Gordon noted that a joint letter from 24 attorneys general explained that the President’s edict is broad, inexact, and utilizes a rarely-used provision in Federal law that allows it to be effective immediately.
“This coalition of Attorneys General is well-prepared to fight the Biden Administration in courts when the time is right, and I am committed to using every tool available to us to oppose federal rules, regulations, and standards whenever they overreach. We are prepared to act promptly once these mandates are finally issued,” the Governor said. “Wyoming will not stand idly by to see any erosion of the constitutional rights afforded our citizens and their industries.”
As the state prepares for its legal battle with the federal government, Governor Gordon stressed that as a conservative Republican, he continues to stand for smaller government that is closest to the people. Governor Gordon reiterated, “Government must resist the temptation to intrude in private sector interests.”
“It is neither conservative nor Republican to replace one form of tyranny with another,” he added. “Doing so is antithetical to our American form of government, even if it is for something we like. I will stand firm against unconstrained governmental overreach regardless of where or when it occurs.”
-END-
Politically Governor Gordon has nearly no choice but to take this approach, and of course he's faced with a special session of the legislature as well, something he may be trying to avoid. But the legal prospects for such a suit are small.
October 22, 2021
Russia is experiencing a record COVID surge.
More Wyomingites are presently hospitalized due to COVID 19 than at any prior point in the pandemic. Deaths have also hit an all time weekly high. Almost all of the new victims are unvaccinated.
One in five of the prisoners in the Wyoming State Prison presently are infected with the disease.
October 24, 2021
The unvaccinated can expect to get COVID 19 every sixteen months, according to a recent study.
October 30, 2021
Wyoming has joined ten other states in a doomed effort to litigate the question of whether the Federal Government can require employees of its contractors to be vaccinated.
The rule hasn't gone into effect It will in December. It's unlikely this issue will be resolved by December, but when it is, it'll be resolved in favor of the Federal government.
Prior Threads:
I was getting ready for work. My wife was getting ready to take our son to preschool.
She was watching the Today Show, and called me up because a jet had hit one of the Twin Towers. I came up and watched the footage.
Then the second one hit. I was watching from the stairs. Right away, I told her it was terrorism.
We all seemingly know the story. Another jet hit the Pentagon. Heroic passengers stormed the cockpit of a fourth and in the resulting struggle it went down, taking all of them, and the Islamic jihadist who justified murder in the name of God, to their deaths.
President Bush promised revenge and retribution.
The nation united.
The Administration soon went off course, mistaking necessarily retribution against Al Queda, to whom the jihadist belonged, with the Baathist of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with whom the same didn't get along. The nation soon set ground in Afghanistan, but the commitment was small. A larger one went to war in Iraq, leading to the end of the Baathist regime there, but a guerilla war against ISIL thereafter which was eventually won. In Afghanistan, the larger commitment, and one to rebuilding the nation with a democratic model after the Taliban regime that gave safe harbor to Al Queda was removed. The slow commitment lead to a messy and protracted war.
That war was more or less won, but a guerilla war against the armed Islamic students of the Taliban, a force that exists only because of Pakistan's support, continued on for 20 years. President Obama tried to extract the US and then reversed course. At the end of his administration President Trump negotiated with the very entity which had given safe harbor to those who attacked us on this day 20 years ago and then committed to withdrawal. President Biden, whom never approved of the nation building mission in Afghanistan, completed what Trump had started with an inept and messy withdrawal that amounted to a surrender to the Taliban and an abandonment of our allies in Afghanistan.
The nation will look back on this day with sadness, as it should. But what it should be considering as well is what its recent acts mean in terms of its immediate future. We've left our enemies in power and rejuvenated in a region which gave rise to this attack 20 years ago and their dedication to an isolated and extreme interpretation to a religion that started as a Christian heresy and spread first by excusing primitive and male vices, and then spread by the sword remains unabated and will not abate.
Killing Osama Bin Laden and devastating Al Queda has made us safer, to be sure. But the ineffective and misdirected nature of our following efforts, followed by the abandonment of that which we created, has not made the world safe.
The pathetic blame game going on regarding the debacle in Afghanistan has me once again stunned, even though I really ought to know better.
My right wing friends were backing withdrawal from Afghanistan fully when Trump launched the current disgrace. As soon as Biden started what Trump started, they switched to decrying what occurred. The mess isn't praiseworthy by any means, but this exercise is really a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black.
Let's look at what really occurred leading up to this embarrassing American defeat.
Indeed, we'll go all the way back.
This morning, when I stumbled out of bed at what has now become a stress induced "late" time for me of 4:45 a.m., and then clicked on the computer and saw the morning's news, I saw a photograph of a Chinook helicopter landing on the US embassy roof in Kabul.
The Taliban has entered Kabul.
It immediately made me recall the North Vietnamese Army entering Saigon and our embassy personnel being taken off the roof.
There is no reason this had to happen. And it's going to be a bloody disaster.
That blood will be on our hands.
There's a lot of reasons this has occurred, and the blame for the disaster goes back to President Bush II and his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. There was never a reason for the United States to launch a war against Iraq in 2001 and the fact that we committed our forces, there, rather than in Afghanistan were there was a dire need to do so, set us off on a half cocked strategy of minimal force that allowed the Taliban to continue to exist and, eventually, recover.
Beyond that, the simple fact of the matter is that the American concept of instant national reform, simply because we are there, is idiotic. Germany didn't reform at the end of World War One. It took a second war and the dismantling of the nation to cause that to occur, and it had somewhat of a history of civil government. Japan, which had a parliament that had been semi functioning as well before it was co-opted by the military, saw its military dismantled and its culture swamped by Americans. Simply setting up a democratic government and thinking it was going to work right away was naive.
An American general has recently opined that significant forces in the nation combined with an intent to stay until 2030 was what was really needed. Rather than that, we hoped for a cheap and easy war and that people would suddenly become democratic and peaceful as that's in their DNA. Recent events should cause us to question if that's even in our political DNA.
If we were going to just go in, get Bin Laden, and not worry about what happened after, we could have done that. We didn't. And that was an option. A big raid just designed to kill Bin Laden could have been done. But once you invade a country, it's your responsibility.
There's no excuse for this whatsoever, and every American administration from George Bush II on deserves the blame for it. There's going to be piles of hand wringing and excuse making, and one of the things we will here is that our actions over the last several months don't really mean that our troops died in vain.
A person should question that.
A recent article I saw somewhere stated that a lot of Vietnam veterans are having an unwelcome recollection of the end of that war. One Vietnam vet I know personally told me that.
And the reason why is that they're seeing an abandonment of a cause we fought for in Afghanistan, just like we did in Vietnam.
It's an open question how long a democratic country can maintain a fight against an enemy that doesn't threaten to overrun it. The US fought for four years in the Civil War over what the nation would be, and twice that long to bring the nation into existence in the 1770s and 1780s. World War Two was fought, by the US, for four years as well. All those wars, and others, were fought to a conclusion, so obviously the US will do that. We more or less did that with Iraq, actually completing what we had started with the second Gulf War.
We didn't do that with Vietnam. We entered, in a minor way, in 1958 and left officially in 1973, but in reality we didn't really get rolling until 1964 and had pretty much gotten out by 1972. Still, Vietnam was a pretty long war by American standards, and we'd grown tired of the whole thing by 1968. Nixon was elected on a promise to get us out, which he did.
By the time we left Vietnam the American Army had basically been destroyed. Not a battlefield destruction by any means, the NVA and the VC were not capable of doing that. But its moral had completely been destroyed. Of the four services, probably the Marines and the Air Force were in the best shape. The Navy actually experienced a late war mutiny on an aircraft carrier, showing how bad things were for it. That's important to know, but it doesn't change the fact that we entered Vietnam in strength in 1965, converted the war to an American style war, were complicit by omission in the assassination of its civilian head of state, and then left. The US could have prevented the North Vietnamese victory in 1975 by the application of air power, but we chose not to.
That may beg the question of what would have occurred in the war had the US simply not become involved. Frankly, the Republic of Vietnam stood a good chance of falling on its own. But we did become involved and even had a bit of a role in seeing a non-democratic civilian government become a series of military ones. Only the first one arguably understood the country itself.
Intervening in a nation militarily imposes obligations on a country, wish for them or not. Wars don't end when the party initiating them concludes they're over. They end when both parties do. When we left Vietnam we did so under a fiction that we were turning the war over (back?) to the South Vietnamese. But we'd converted the war's nature into something else by that time, and taught the ARVN to fight like the US Army, with US equipment, and US airpower. It's no wonder the rank and file of the ARVN collapsed in 1975. They no longer had all of that like they had before.
And that's what is going to happen in Afghanistan.
Somebody whose feed I get on Facebook, at least for the time being, claims that we entered Afghanistan on a limited "punitive expedition" and should have gotten right back out. There's some merit to that claim, but that isn't what we did at all. Indeed, we botched the war there right from the onset, and that set the path for the next twenty years.
Donald Rumsfeld, who just died recently, was Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense and therefore was familiar with punitive expeditions. The US reaction to the Mayaguez's taking by Cambodia was sort of that. But by the time he was George Bush II's Secretary of Defense, he'd become a member of the technology v. troops trap that has so often ensnared Americans.
Moreover, while U.S. troops first touched ground in October 2001, the US put the war on a back burner preferring instead to take on Iraq in a war that was completely unconnected with the 9/11 attacks and which didn't need to be fought, or if it did, it didn't need to be fought at that time.
Indeed, often missed in the story of "America's longest war" is the fact that the US never committed to it in the way that was either required or really military necessary. At a high point, in 2011, there were 98,000 US troops in Afghanistan, which is a lot, but pales in comparison to the 500,000 men commitment that was made to Vietnam and Korea. Of course, those were large wars in comparison as well. By and large, however, the US kept its commitment to Afghanistan low and slow, which meant that the Taliban was able to adjuster, and for that matter so was Al Queada. That kept the war running. In December 2002, well after the US commitment had commenced, there were still just under 10,000 US troops in the country.
Fighting guerilla wars isn't easy to start with, but to really have caught and addressed the Taliban, the initial commitment should have been heavy and exclusive. We never did that.
It's also easy to now forget that Osama bin Laden wasn't killed until May 2011. It took us a full decade to achieve that goal, which had been part of the initial goal in the first instance. Having engaged the war in Afghanistan in 2001, and having not achieved that goal until a decade later, those who argue that the effort was to be a punitive raid have more or less missed that point.
As we were in the country for that length of time, it was necessary to attempt to restore a functioning Afghani civil government. But that sort of thing takes a very long time, which we should have been well aware of. As we're addressing in another post on a completely unrelated topic, democracy isn't instinctive and building a democratic culture takes a very long time. Germany and Japan, which had functioning parliamentary systems that were not completely democratic, but which did function, flunked it in the mid 20th Century and didn't achieve democracy until they were occupied after World War Two. China, which started off attempting in 1911, has never pulled it off. The US, our own example, started off with the reputation of being radically democratic, but only 6% of the population could vote in the country's first democratic election.
Given this, we can't really expect the Afghani government to be stable for a long time. It's had twenty years, some might note, but many nations have taken longer than that.
And its military is collapsing in the face of a Taliban onslaught. The best we can now hope for is that some regions of the country will become self-governing under their own local warlords. Not a cheery thought, but the best one. A 30,000 man strong body of Afghani commandos continues to fight well, but they are about it. The best they can hope for is that the Afghan central government becomes one more contesting force, sort of in the model of Lebanon of the 1970s.
None of this had to be. We could have avoided this by fighting the war intelligently and according to well established military principals in 2001 and 2002. But we botched that.
Having failed that, that committed us to the long haul. That would mean keeping some troops, and more particularly air assets, in the country for a long time, perhaps another twenty years. If that seems outrageous, we've now had troops in Europe since they landed in Italy in 1943, and some forces on Japanese soil that have been there since 1945. Our troops in the Philippines were there, under somewhat analogous conditions, from 1898 until the country was really made free in 1945, and continued on for various reasons decades after that. We've been in South Korean since 1950 in a technical state of halted hostilities.
When we left Vietnam in 1972 it took three years for the country to fall, giving the US the hoped for illusion of "peace with honor" that Nixon had hoped for, even as he knew the country would fall. The country has followed the Communist path since then, with all that entails, including a slow move towards a market economy directed from above. Lenin's New Economic Policy may never have taken root in the USSR, but it seems to have elsewhere in the Communist world, save for the Stalinist theme park of North Korea. No such hope can be realistically conveyed for an Afghanistan with the Taliban back in power. It never had any interest in anything other than a strict Islamic rule. And that's what is most likely to return in that country. We'll be complicit in that.
Addendum
Prior to the US announcing its intent to withdraw during the late portion of the Trump Presidency, total non Afghani forces supporting the government amount to 7,500 troops, of which 2,500 were Americans. The Afghan National Army was doing 98% of the fighting.
