Hard-hitting questions from Victor Hanson — about the Afghanistan War withdrawal

© 2021 Peter Free

 

02 September 2021

 

 

Do Four Stars have some explaining to do?

 

Victor Hanson wrote the following about this question:

 

 

On the very day of the attack that killed American troops, the sergeant major of the U.S. Army reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength, commemorating not the dead, but Women’s Equality Day.

 

If so . . . is the opposite of diversity — unity — our weakness?

 

Will such wokeness ensure that we do not abandon the Bagram air base in the middle of the night without opposition?

 

Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America’s top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country.

 

The Pentagon needs to stop virtue-signaling about diversity days and culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees.

 

Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram air base was abandoned by night, or why Taliban terrorists are our supposed “partners” in organizing our surrender and escape?

 

Which general allowed more than $85 billion in American weapons to fall to the Taliban — a sum equal to the price of seven new U.S. aircraft carriers?

 

Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?

 

Who left behind biometric devices that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?

 

© Victor Davis Hanson, There's a Problem in the Upper Reaches of Our Military, PJ Media (02 September 2021)

 

 

I'm curious about those allegations myself.

 

I agree with (USMC) Lt. Colonel Stuart Scheller's demand for accountability.

 

 

In truth, these days . . .

 

. . . I tentatively hypothesize — (actually so, since the beginning of the Vietnam War) — that a Four Star clawed his and her way to the top, while comfortably ensconced in Party Line Mediocrity's agreeable saddle.

 

John T. Reed' summary of the military promotion process will be illuminating for readers not familiar with how it works:

 

 

John T. Reed, The ’30-Year, Single-Elimination, Suck-Up Tournament’ or How America Selects Its Generals, Anti-Empire (13 December 2021)

 

 

Imposing physical appearance and the ability to exude gravitas — while being simultaneously hypocritical, arguably blowhard-ish, and certainly propaganda-prone — helps in the Stars-Accrual Marathon quite a lot.

 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Mark Milley) and the Defense Secretary (Lloyd Austin) are currently highly visible examples of this.

 

Naturally, they're not alone.

 

In fact, the Austin-Milley example's merit lies in it being so representative of the perennially Bestarred Group's lack of honestly impressive, society-serving talent.

 

As a flock, our Four Star people are closer to representing America's self-involved, conniving worst — than they are to modeling this nation's society-conscious, staightforward best.

 

 

The moral? — Pompously delivered douchebagism reigns in the United States

 

That's a pity, given the high proportion of admirably capable folk in our midst. A successful society would do better.

 

Oligarchy, of course, opposes promoting capable folks to the top. Were it to do so, the Great American Plutocracy would be quickly squashed.

 

Can't have that, can we?

 

And thus, Four Stars' strategic and moral (metaphorical) scumbaggery (not to be rude)— and its continually lying Commanders in Chiefs — will continue to strut the American stage.

 

This parade of legalized Grifting and enthusiastically displayed Incompetence will only end, when an Outsider — and historical time's natural entropy — dismember most of our stage.

 

The end is probably coming sooner than we presume.

 

 

Do I sound like an evangelical nutcase?

 

Or a disregarded Prophet?

 

 

Either way, I am forecasting that, historically speaking — a society that intentionally elects (a twisted pun) to promote incompetence, thereby inarticulately prophesies its own doom.

 

No nation succeeds long, while imprisoned under the leadership of intellectually and morally bankrupt people.

 

No disrespect, of course, is intended.

 

The Human Condition is a suffocating blanket that predicts our extinction. Blaming a comparative handful of folk would be unfair.