So a while back I directed you all to a couple of posts about how the Taliban is basically running around, stronger and more organized than ever, despite our and NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan. His Majesty the Grey One has been running a series of late, “Simple Answers to Simple Questions,” and I’ve got one for you. Read this article, and pay attention to this part in particular:

So he requested that the B-1 perform a “show of force,” a low-level pass meant to frighten any fighters nearby.

Colonel Schepper dropped the jet steeply from 20,000 feet to around 8,000 feet and roared over the soldiers’ position, releasing flares to heighten the effect of the fly-by.

On the plane’s radio, the soldier voiced a simple response: “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”

Understanding the “facts on the ground” as I do, it’s pretty clear to me that we’re not “winning” in Afghanistan and not likely to any time soon. We are teaching a bunch of formerly not-so-organized wackjobs how to better evade Western forces, survive bombing campaigns, and otherwise act like an organized military, but that’s another post. My question, one that’s been floating around in my head a lot lately, has to do with why it is that people are so quick to forget the past. Common wisdom reminds us that we dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did in all of WWII. We seem to have a similar approach in the Middle East, although the article notes that we don’t “carpet bomb” Iraq due to the civilians (praise be to Allah for that at least). Yet, we seem to think that that flying super-high over Afghanistan and releasing “beautiful” flares is a fascinating way to win a war.

I’m just trying to make a little sense of it, because I’m coming to believe that the vast majority of decision makers in our military and the government agencies that have oversight of it are deeply stupid. Or incredibly greedy, and thinking about cushy gigs at Halliburton when they get out of the service. Still, it shocks me to that that Vietnam, and all its military failures, happened in my relatively young lifetime, and yet, here we have folks attempting more or less the same strategy to the same results.

Is it that hard to remember the last war, and what did and did not work in it? Apparently, the answer is “yes.”