STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

American 4Star General John Campbell Attains Historic/Hysteric Proportions

Throughout 2015, He Insisted the “Taliban Are Losing!”
Just Days Ago, Taliban Defeated Afghan/American SOF in hours!

Next, Americans airstrike a hospital in Afghanistan?
 

Just when I thought I had heard it all regarding American military might degrading exponentially before our eyes, some knuckle-headed, General John Campbell, decorated with more medals than a peacock, shows how truly incompetent our active combat leaders really are. Only a few months ago, Campbell reassured the world with his grandiose pronouncements that, despite intelligence to the contrary, the Taliban forces were pretty much defeated. 

Campbell, like his self-delusional precursors Westmoreland, assured the world and America in particular that it was close to impossible for the enemy to obtain a strategic position because there was no evidence of heavy military deployments by the Taliban. Remember during the Vietnam War, generals insisted to the very last days before we whisked the American Embassy officials and military personnel out of Saigon that we, Americans, were ‘defeating both the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army.

The Saigon evacuation became a pictorial landmark in American military humiliation, yet our military/civilian leaders continued to perseverate on single point: “We were winning the war!” Today, we still hear the haunting refrain from those who fought on the ground that ‘if … not for this.. or for that… we would have won..” The truth is that we never had a chance in Vietnam nor in Afghanistan nor in any other overseas deployment because our senior officers were never invested in the culture, terrain, nor in a specific strategy that should have been designed to succeed in a certain deployment.

We were and still are ‘illiterate’ when it comes to the ‘human terrain of battle’. None our officers are trained in the culture, psychology or the real nature of combat which does not involve heavy weapons or large numbers of personnel. Except for a few glaring exceptions like our different Special Forces [exception: the self-promoting SEALS], we have no capacity to engage in any other terrain other than those concocted in the minds of the Pentagon War Gamers. We are just a giant ineffectual military body capable of nothing more than consuming large amounts of money and creating whimsical narratives that end in what I will delineate as the “General Campbell Fiasco”.  Per custom, Campbell will never have to account for his intellectual malfeasance nor his incompetent performance. Generals simply fade away—as they should.

In contrast, we see the Russians move into Syria without any pronouncements of impending victory or any accompanying denigration of the enemy.They simply use their allies on the ground—Iranian Soldiers tested in the cauldron of continuous battles; as well as a five-thousand-man Hezbollah Shi’ite Lebanese force—in concert with heavy artillery and fighter jets to engage ISIS in a way that we could only dream of doing.

I am not pro or against any one institution. Yet having had the privilege of teaching at Ft McNair and having engaged our senior military staff in dialogue and critical thinking, I can honestly predict, how and when, American troops will die needlessly because we did not have the right leadership or strategy.

If war-making were a real profession and not a make-believe with hoopla of faux nationalism, then every general would have been court martialed for incompetency and stupidity. If they had been medical doctors, they would have been dismissed from the medical profession. At best, they are toy soldiers, led by Sec. Defs. Ashton Carter or Panetta or even Bob Gates; political operatives with less combat experience or strategic understanding than the American children playing simulated war games on xBox.

War is not America’s métier. We should outsource it out to the Russians, Chechens, Bulgarians, Chileans, Chinese, Central Asians and any other mercenary who is willing to fight for money and makes no pretense that they are defending our nation; or, our national security.

Contrary to the absurd pronouncements that we are a super power in the 21^st century, we better reflect on our continuous defeat due to arrogance and ignorance. We are not warriors. We are not fighters.We are a country whose leaders continue to spout absurd narratives that compel our military officers to sacrifice their minds and bodies to a spasm of jingoistic self-delusion. We are a nation adrift in a heating cauldron of discontent and animosity without the slightest ideas of how to nullify or even engage the world’s discontent as it turns to us for succor.

George Clemenceau, the French Statesman said the following apt words:
“War is much too important a matter to be left to the generals.”

And I will add one more Latin proverb:

“Sweet is war to those who have never experienced it.”