War

I wasn't sure if this belongs on my book blog or over on the political blog. I decided it belongs here. Over the past few weeks I read three books about three very different wars. I generally shy away from such books, but a new friend of mine gave me a copy of a book he wrote in 1985. He thought it would have meaning for me. It did, but maybe not in the way he intended.

...And a Hard Rain Fell: A GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam  by John Ketwig is still in print. It's a hard book to read if you were in Vietnam or if you were on the home front, protesting or not, waiting for a loved one to come home or not. The back cover likens this to Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, a great anti-war novel. I read it years ago during a sit-in. I read it again before I plunged into Ketwig's story. Different, but so much the same.

Ketwig was a kid when he went to Vietnam. Late teens. He was there near Dak To and through the Tet Offensive. His book, divided into three sections, is stream of consciousness for the first half. His fear, his anger, come through in long run-on sentences where his emotions pour out onto the page. His second section, his healing year in Thailand before he returned to The World, is less frenetic. As he feels he's safe, his language is less powerful. The return to The World in section three is the weakest and shortest. But what he writes in the first section overrides the weakness of the last section.

The third book, No Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan, by Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer, is measured in tone, reportorial in its presentation. A story of one Special Forces team and its Afghan commando counterparts are airlifted into a valley to capture or kill a high-value target. The problem is the valley is surrounded by the enemy on cliffs surrounding the landing zone. Caught by automatic weapon fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the teams are asked to scale the cliffs and bring down the target. The fear and anger come through without run-on sentences. Still, it's a very powerful narrative.

Three different books. Each worth reading. Each made me ask tough questions.

• Have we learned nothing about war? We still send out boys, girls, men and women into harm's way, sometimes with little foreknowledge of what they will face.
• Do we not know that you can't expect troops to seize hills under withering fire? In Afghanistan, military intelligence said the ridge tops were heavily fortified.
• Have we not learned from Gallipoli? From Balls Bluff, VA. Normandy. Dak To? Numerous valleys in Afghanistan? We must not, because we keep doing the same thing over and over. Thank you, Einstein. Yes, doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different outcome is insanity.

Each book ground into my psyche. I hated all three. I couldn't put all three down. I wondered if we'd ever figure it out.An earworm about drove me nuts. Thanks, Country Joe, for these lines: "And it's 1,2,3 what are we fightin for? Don't ask me I don't give a damn, the next stop if Vietnam."

I'll probably get slammed for this post, but I don't give a damn. Slam away. 

Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars

I finished Obama's Wars over the weekend. Before I talk about the book, I need to make a couple of disclaimers.

First, I love Bob Woodward's reporting. I've read several of his books from Veil, to All the President's Men, to the Bush trilogy and finally to Obama's Wars. I find his reporting to be factual and understandable. He makes the complex subject matter easy to follow.

My timing for this book worked out better than I imagined. The book focuses on the decisions that went into Obama's sending 30,000 troops into Afghanistan. After months of discussion, and the President receiving approval from all the principals responsible for the decision, several of the principals immediately tried to find ways around their decision. When you have people who say one thing and then do something else, the program overall could be doomed to failure.

The main thrust of adding new military personnel in Afghanistan was a program called "clear-hold-build-transfer." This means NATO troops, mostly from the U.S., would clear a city/region/town of Taliban and other insurgents, hold the position, build support from the populace and transfer the region to the Afghani army or police.

After a year, this program is barely out of clear and hold. Few territories have been transferred to the Afghanis. Why? Think about a corrupt government at all levels. Think about Afghanis entering the army and refusing to fight. Think about our warfighters on the front line fighting the insurgents and then also having to train local police and army, who don't want to take over. Why should they do any work when we are there to do it for them?

And then there is Karzai. Unstable. Off his meds too frequently. Contradictory. Supports a corrupt half-brother. And "duly elected." Even though the election was corrupt, NATO embraced Karzai. He's "our guy," and we are stuck with him.

How I wish Woodward could have reported that the Bush team looked for an end game before committing to an endless war in a region that no outsider has ever conquered.

I now know how badly we need Richard Holbrooke. His work is done, but the job goes on. I hope that the person who steps into his shoes is half as good.

Oh my, I started to write about Woodward's book and ended up talking about the mess we are in. Maybe that's the point of the book: Get people thinking about what went into decisions, what that means to the U.S. long term, why the end-game is murky. It worked.