A modest proposal: Fire all of the post 9/11 generals
We need to rebuild the ranks of the senior officer corps with members of a new generation who know where we went wrong — and do it now.
We need to rebuild the ranks of the senior officer corps with members of a new generation who know where we went wrong — and do it now.
It’s clear now that the invasion of Iraq and the 20-year GWOT couldn’t have happened without the Fourth Estate’s complicity.
The first American charged under the Espionage Act after the attacks asks whether empire has permanently replaced the republic.
But it was a trap laid by Osama bin Laden that only Washington could spring. And it did.
Thursday’s ghastly bombings reflect a real threat to the Taliban’s new-found control over the country — and to the U.S. evacuation on the ground.
But poverty, climate stress, and instability make the people who live there, and the strength of any new government, vulnerable.
These members bucked their parties and risked alienation (and primaries), but stood their ground on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Cities are falling to the Taliban at a rapid pace, but the conditions for failure were set long before the US troop withdrawal this summer.
With no end in sight and violence under the radar but ongoing, this is one ‘forever war’ that Biden risks perpetuating.