Two Books Blast Bush and the Neocons’ Iraq and Afghan Wars

The public library is one of the few government programs I use from the immense looting of my tax dollars. I was wandering through an Orange County library recently, looking at random books, and spotted these two: “Dog Company: A True Story of American Soldiers Abandoned by Their High Command,” from 2017 by Lynn Vincent, an investigative journalist, and Roger Hill, a former infantry commander in the 101st Airborne, West Pont Grad and decorated combat veteran.

The second is “Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World,” from 2015 by Christina Lamb, and is her journal as a war correspondent. 

Both books’ pages already are yellowing like our memories of these wars. They came out before Biden’s ignominious exit from Afghanistan in 2021. Trump had set up a withdrawal for February, just after he ended up leaving office, in the winter when the Afghanis stay home. Biden waited until the summer, when the Afghanis since time immemorial come out to fight either each other like baseball season, or any invader. 

All that seems to have been forgotten now by the media as it grapples with putting a good face to the voters for Biden’s current twin disasters in Ukraine and Gaza. Although one exception is Brett Stephens, complaining in the New York Times about Biden pausing bomb deliveries to Israel. Actually, the real reason probably is there aren’t enough bombs in the pipeline because of too many wars – all supported by Stephens. 

And he doesn’t take into account all those protesters shouting “Genocide Joe,’ a major reason a new poll showing him losing five of six swing states. His own paper reported, “Trump Leads in 5 Key States, as Young and Nonwhite Voters Express Discontent With Biden: A new set of Times/Siena polls, including one with The Philadelphia Inquirer, reveal an erosion of support for the president among young and nonwhite voters upset about the economy and Gaza.”

But here is Stephens: “The last time the United States bailed on an ally, in Afghanistan, the result was a political debacle from which the president’s approval rating never recovered. Why would the White House want to put voters in mind of that episode?” Yet Stephens himself has no military background. Born Nov. 21, 1973, he was 27 on the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and easily could have joined any of the services, a year later serving in Afghanistan. If he had fought there, I’m sure we would have won the war and Afghanistan today would be a free democracy.

Back to the books, which are two more reasons never to trust the U.S. foreign-policy establishment, especially someone long deep inside it as Biden: Everything is a lie. “Dog Company” even was heavily censored by the military. Here are pp. 304-5: