Our flag officers who seemingly blow with the left-wing political winds need to be purged after the Afghanistan debacle with an old fashioned Roman "decimation". There is hope from the ranks of the military leaders who actually fight.
We can say that Biden--or whoever guided his hand to sign the appropriate documents--created the Afghanistan debacle. But nobody in the military leadership was willing to talk the administration out of this error. Nor were they willing to leak to the press to build pressure to stop the error. Nor were they willing to publicly resign and explain why they were doing so in order to stop the error.
While officers ultimately have to follow orders from the civilian side, the alternative of quitting rather than carrying out disastrous orders is the last resort. Honor required that. Their oath of duty required that. But they remained silent until they needed to cover their butts.
A
Marine lieutenant colonel called out senior leadership for bad advice
on the Afghanistan withdrawal for failing to stand up against bad decisions (tip to Instapundit):
Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, "Hey, it's a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone?" Scheller, in uniform, said in the video. "Did anyone do that? And when you didn't think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, "We completely messed this up?"
There was a failure by our flag officers to accept responsibility. That LTC accepted that his public statement trying to fix the military he loyally served justified his superiors relieving him of duty. So double respect for the man. He rightly called out leaders for this debacle to help America. And he accepted the punishment without complaint for his action.
But where are the flag officers? This absence has pissed me off the most the last couple weeks. It is far more dangerous than even a major defeat abroad, as Afghanistan certainly is.
Although I suppose I have some hope for belated responsibility once our troops are pulled out.
But if that sense of responsibility doesn't happen from those top officers, hope amidst the ruins of the Afghanistan debacle is stirring within the military:
The general officer U.S. military ranks have a big problem: The field grade officer and noncommissioned officer ranks have had enough of the double standards applied to leadership.
Top line: Whereas those out in the field are held strictly accountable for any failure, real or imagined, general officer ranks are rarely held accountable for far worse leadership failures that have a far greater impact.
Hell, I faced consequences just for dropping my bayonet. And I was aware I had dropped it.
It has long been said that while the American military went to war after 9/11, the American people went shopping. That division of attention clearly stands not between troops and civilians but at the general officer rank.
Our officer corps is surely the most technically proficient in our history. The mechanics of the withdrawal from Kabul demonstrate real proficiency. But the senior officers spent too little time on Clausewitz and too much time on management, and lately "white rage" bullshit, to be military leaders who pursue victory above all else.
I want uniformed heads figuratively on pikes outside the Pentagon. Soon. Decimate their ranks.
Branded. But without the innocence.
Finally, a call for accountability:
Nearly 90 retired U.S. generals and admirals penned an open letter asking Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley to resign from their positions following their “negligence in performing their duties primarily involving events surrounding the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
As the joke about lawyers at the bottom of the sea goes, Austin and Milley are a good start.
And if the American people don't do the same to civilian rulers in November 2022 to exact a price for this humiliating and needless defeat, well that's pretty damning. As a country we must not accept "progressive" leaders that we see at the state level like Newsom and Cuomo; or at city levels like in Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, Minneapolis, and Portland, where they have surrendered civilization to the barbarians under the guise of being compassionate.
Remember, the worst thing isn't having bad leadership during a war. The worst thing is having bad leadership while we believe we have good leadership. At least that belief died in Afghanistan.
Our jihadi enemies still hate us and still want to kill us. We don't get to "end" that war. We only get to pretend--for a while--that we ended that war. We'll need civilian and military leaders when that pretending is stopped, whether by jihadis or by our great power foes who take their shot at America.
Have a super sparkly day.
UPDATE: I added an old meme I forgot about.
