We Never Learn A Commentary by Former U.S. Senator Ernest F. Hollings

We Never Learn

A Commentary by Former U.S. Senator Ernest F. Hollings

Congressman Charlie Wilson, who won the only war the U.S. has won since World War II, and I was having lunch before I retired in 2005.  Charlie hadn’t had a drink in five years, was remarried and looked five years younger.  “You know how we won that war?” said Charlie.  “The Afghans don’t like foreigners and the Russians were foreigners.  In fact, they don’t like each other” observed Charlie.   “The warlord in the North was our friend and I was always paying off the warlord in the South to get him to go along.”  After twelve years in Afghanistan, it appears that we’re the foreigners and warlords still don’t like each other.  I was happy when President Obama said we’d be out of Afghanistan in 2014.  Now it looks like we are staying another ten years.  Today, the Taliban carry the battle.  Nobody trained the Taliban to fight.  If we haven’t taught the Afghans to fight in twelve years, I don’t believe another ten will help. 

The Taliban, or Al Qaeda, are really Afghans or Pakistanis from the tribes on the border.  In George Crile’s book, “Charlie Wilson’s War” - the words Taliban or Al Qaeda never appear.  Anybody who disagrees with us is called Taliban or Al Qaeda.  The only reason I can find to stay another ten years was in this week’s Economist (12/7/13) – when the Russians left “the country was ripped apart by a destructive civil war”.  This takes us back to “Afghans don’t like each other”.  The warlords don’t want Afghanistan to have an army; Pakistan doesn’t want Afghanistan to have an army; India doesn’t want Afghanistan to have an army; China doesn’t want Afghanistan to have an army.  The only country that wants Afghanistan to have an army is the United States.  We ought to tell the warlords that they have next year to learn to get along with each other - we are leaving.  We can’t afford to lose G.I.’s monitoring Afghanistan’s civil war for the next ten years.  We never learn.

            We thought the military could change the culture in Vietnam but after ten years we learned that it couldn’t.  We thought we could stop the Sunni’s blowing up the Shiites and had “the Awakening” in Iraq.  We held an election in Iraq and the Shiites won. Now the Sunni’s are back blowing up the Shiites and the Kurds in the North are selling oil to Turkey.  It’s a mess.  We never learn. 

            The U.S. is not willing to suffer casualties and we ought to be careful to avoid military conflict with China.  Any conflict could go nuclear.  We shouldn’t involve the U.S. in disputes in the South China Sea.  We’re not going to get G.I.’s killed over the Senkaku Islands.  Having recognized “one China” in the Shanghai Communiqué, we are not going to war with China over Taiwan.  The United States has commitments that can’t be filled and we’ve got to stop acting like we can.  We never learn. 

            The United States is over extended militarily.  We have deployed the CIA and the military over the world, looking for Al Qaeda to drone kill.  Drone killing makes enemies.  Last week militants went on a rampage through a military hospital in Yemen, killing fifty two.  We had droned killed the number two leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen and the killing fifty two was revenge.  We’ve got to pull in our horns militarily and go back to our Good Neighbor Policy.  We never learn. 

In foreign policy “it’s the economy, stupid”.  Our economy is being offshored.  We can limit the offshoring and rebuild the economy by making it attractive for Corporate America to invest and produce in the U.S.  Governors and Mayors travel to China attracting investment.  To receive the contributions from Wall Street, the big banks and Corporate America, the President and Congress do nothing.  We never learn.