Generals’ endless lies promote endless wars

No job may have more prestige than being a general in the U.S. military. But during peacetime no job may be more boring. All those medals, fancy military dress, battalions and firepower are essentially worthless without a war to use them in.

Maybe that’s why U.S. generals lie so hard and so often when America contemplates and prosecutes our endless, senseless wars.

In my lifetime alone I’ve witnessed three wars of 18, 20 and 21 years prosecuted and prolonged with generals’ lies.

The first was Vietnam, a war we inherited from its original ruler France. They were ousted in the 1954 rout at Dien Bien Phu. American generals gloried that America took up the challenge for the next 21 years. They said the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were no match for American men and firepower. As the U.S. body county headed north from one in 1956 to over 58,000, the generals kept repeating ‘just another 50,000 more troops, please, and we can march to victory. The Pentagon Papers, purloined by antiwar hero Daniel Ellsberg, blew the whistle on the generals two decades of lies.

The 21st century gave U.S. generals two senseless wars to lie about. The first began in Afghanistan in October, 2001. After a couple of months in they claimed the Taliban was finished, never to return. More lies. The Taliban were never finished, embarking on a 20 year hit and run, guerilla campaign that defeated the world’s strongest military as well as their puppet Afghan government. Just as with Vietnam, the Afghanistan Papers catalogued 20 years of generals’ likes in the new century.

While we’re just about out of Afghanistan, we’re still negotiating with Iraq to get our 2,500 troops out of there as well. Generals’ fibs have been making a silk purse out of that war’s pig’s ears for 18 years, often with the same generals serving up whoppers in both wars to keep them going.

But that blizzard of lies keeping endless wars going would have no effect if our political leaders, our media and the American people would simply stop believing them.

For some peculiar reason, when a general emblazoned with a chest full of medals says to follow him to victory, we all fall in line like sheep.

Give thanks that the civilian leader of America, President Biden, finally had the wisdom and the guts to tell the lying generals, ‘Shut up and get out.’