We have fought five wars in Asia since World War II, and you would think we would have learned a few things.
Like, don’t.
With the U.S. still engaged in its longest war in history, and with no apparent end in sight, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates used an address to cadets at West Point to make the point again.
“Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined,” he told America’s future warriors.
Gates was actually paraphrasing Gen. Douglas MacArthur who is credited with telling President John F. Kennedy the same in 1961.
MacArthur was speaking from experience, having led U.S. troops in Korea to the tense stalemate that exists there today.
Despite that advice, Kennedy increased the U.S. presence in Vietnam from 900 troops to 16,000 at the time of his death in 1963.
Beginning in 1964, Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara gradually escalated the U.S. presence to 535,000 troops in 1968.
All of which ended with defeat in 1975 with the fall of South Vietnam.
Having fought in Vietnam, Colin Powell built on previous policy to develop something which has since been called the Powell Doctrine.
It is a series of eight questions every president should consider before going to war.
Among them: Do we have a clear objective? Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement? Do we have genuine broad international support?
Following that advice, the U.S. invaded Kuwait and part of Iraq in 1990, before withdrawing 18 months later having accomplished its goal.
All of which seems to have been forgotten in the early part of this decade as the U.S. first rushed into Afghanistan to eliminate a terrorist threat, and then into Iraq to capture and destroy weapons of mass destruction which ultimately did not exist.
Suddenly not only were we fighting a ground war in Asia, we were fighting two. Worse, our objectives had shifted to the costly and amorphous tasks of nation-building and establishing democracy.
While U.S. troops are expected to leave Iraq later this year, the future there is uncertain and our success mixed. The dictator Saddam Hussein is gone, but an even more menacing enemy, Iran, has been greatly empowered.
There are several messages American policy makers should take away from these five wars.
First, we truly do have the best trained, equipped and disciplined fighting force in the world.
Second, that force has its limits, which must be recognized.
Finally, as we are seeing now across the Mideast, people will eventually overthrow their own dictators.
We can and should use force to protect ourselves and our interests. But freedom and democracy are most precious when people shed their own blood to earn them.
rrhoades@sunjournal.com
The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and editorial board.
Editor’s note: When this column was originally published, it incorrectly referenced the name of which country U.S. troops are leaving.
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