Why America Loses Every War It Starts ...
Consider history. The United States won the “big one”: the Cold War. But every time Americans were sent to wars that it started or into combat for reasons that lacked just cause, we lost or failed.
What wars has America lost since World War II? Let's go through his list:
Korea, he says, "was at best a draw." Well, we started the war with South Korea and ended the war with South Korea--which then became a prosperous democratic ally capable of standing on its own for the most part. That outcome is at best a draw?
Vietnam was "an outright and ignominious defeat." One, we started that war? I thought we defended a South Vietnam that North Vietnam was trying to conquer. And we did leave with South Vietnam still standing, needing only to supply South Vietnam with the means to fight. Which our Congress failed to do in partisan revenge for Nixon, which led to the north's conquest of the south. How is that a stain on the American military? Didn't we win the actual war? Didn't Congress throw away that win?
The Persian Gulf War was a win, he says. But since battlefield victory left Saddam in power until 2003 and weakened Iraq to be vulnerable to more Iranian influence with the Shias of Iraq, how is that considered a victory under his definitions of success? I think it was a win, mind you. But how does Ullman under the circumstances?
Afghanistan is a defeat because it is ongoing with no end in sight. But we did destroy the Taliban regime that was a sanctuary for jihadis who attacked us on 9/11 and replaced it with a friendly government that helps us kill jihadis. It is not won yet, but that is a testament to the fury and persistence of our jihadi enemies rather than any failure of our military.
The Iraq War was a "fiasco" and possibly the "greatest American catastrophe since the Civil War." Huh? We rapidly crushed Saddam's army in the 2003 campaign that was both legal and justified; and defeated a series of insurgent and terrorist enemies in a relatively rapid campaign that essentially lasted a bit over four years. Our casualties were historically low for such a campaign. We nearly lost the campaign after the battlefield victories when ISIL rose up in 2014 in our absence since 2011. And funny, but no mention is made of Iraq War 2.0 initiated by President Obama to recover from that near defeat. And in the end, we've won Iraq War 2.0 this year. Iraq helps us kill jihadis rather than training terrorists and invading our friends as it did when Saddam was in charge.
He claims Beirut 1983 and Grenada 1983 as defeats.
Beirut was not a war but was a peacekeeping mission. It was arguably the result of trying to balance Israel and the Arab world following the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to hammer the PLO. And despite the bombing of our Marines by pro-Iranian terrorists, the intervention did stabilize the situation without alienating either side which remained friendly to us. That was ugly but hardly a poster child for defeat.
As for Grenada, we actually destroyed a pro-Soviet state and turned it into a pro-American state, invalidating the Brezhnev Doctrine--which held that going socialist was a permanent change in Moscow's favor--in the process.
Kosovo was a failure because it took 78 days. Good grief, the standard is that our win didn't happen in days rather than months? Seriously?
Obama touched off a civil war in Syria plus regional instability by bombing Libya? Huh? We did successfully help locals to overthrow the regime. And it was at the urging of our European allies. While I doubt we needed to wage that war, we did win it. Is it our military's fault Europe didn't want to stabilize the country after? And to blame problems elsewhere as resulting from that war in Libya is nonsense. The problem was the lack of stability elsewhere. Europe didn't destabilize after Kosovo because the rest of Europe was stable. The Islamic world is not the model of stability, if you haven't noticed. And that was true before Libya's strongman was overthrown.
Yet he says we won the Cold War--despite the failure to prevent the rise of a hostile Russia after defeating the USSR. Just what is his standard for victory and defeat?
Judging the American military as deficient for failing to do more than their narrow military task is ridiculous. America goes to war--not just our military. And if non-military tasks aren't achieved, look at the State Department, Congress, or somewhere else to seek reasons for any failures apart from battlefield victories. Ullman does make that point, but he fails to make the case that we lost the wars that he says weren't the fault of the military.
And if he isn't blaming the military, why say we lose when we start a war or don't have a good reason to fight? I don't think he even tried to make that case for the examples he cites as losses.
It's a jumbled mess of an assessment.
As for saying Russia has no intention of attacking NATO, they sure do seem to practice that mission rather a bit. And they aren't shy about claiming NATO is an enemy.
And what about saying ISIL had no army? Of course they had an army! That's how they held their territory in Iraq captured in 2014. They weren't an insurgent force. The ran the place. With an army. A small, largely light infantry motorized army, but an army nonetheless.
I'm not sure what value the book he is selling has given the nonsense in the article he penned.
Good Lord. What drivel.
