New York Times readers accustomed to expressing dissent about United States military action around the world welcomed Daniel P. Bolger’s candid call for an end to mythmaking about the “two failed wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The surge legend” about Iraq “is soothing, especially for military commanders like me,” Mr. Bolger wrote in “The Truth About the Wars.” “We can convince ourselves that we did our part, and a few more diplomats or civilian leaders should have done theirs.
“As a three-star general who spent four years trying to win this thing — and failing — I now know better,” he wrote.
Readers appreciated the retired general’s call for a public reckoning of failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Our veterans certainly deserve an accounting. But so does the American public,” Martha Shelley of Portland, Ore., wrote. “We need to face the truth of what we have done in the Middle East, and what we have become as a nation.”
Comments posted on Veterans Day advanced antiwar themes that have been prevalent in opinion-page reader comments since their advent in 2007.
“Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis have died, which is a monumental tragedy,” Ron Alexander wrote from Oakton, Va. “We leave the region in chaos, which is a strategic defeat of staggering proportions. It’s all been perfectly obvious to anyone who would see.”
Mr. Bolger believes the wars failed because the United States could not grasp the culture, priorities and capabilities of local populations. “We did not understand the enemy, a guerrilla network embedded in a quarrelsome, suspicious civilian population,” he wrote. “We didn’t understand our own forces, which are built for rapid, decisive conventional operations, not lingering, ill-defined counterinsurgencies.”
Sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia have rendered permanent a war in Iraq that was incited by the United States, some readers noted.
“The true battle is organic among the Iraqis themselves,” wrote Jeff White from Dairy country, who identified himself as first sergeant, retired. “A war of ideas can not be won throwing more boots on ground.”
Vietnam veterans and others noted the parallel United States policy tragedy that led to the Vietnam War.
“I served only as a medical corpsman in Vietnam but it has become the prism through which I view the world around me,” George Hoffman wrote from Stow, Ohio. “I never thought in my wildest imagination we would commit a foreign policy debacle that actually rivals Vietnam. And we have in Iraq.”
One veteran wondered if honest appraisals of the Vietnam War might have helped avoid future tragedies. “It was an honor to serve my country in Vietnam,” Chris Gibbs wrote from Fanwood, N.J. “Maybe if we’re honest with ourselves about Vietnam it will help us avoid stupid policy wars in the future. But I doubt it.”
Mr. Bolger called for sober honesty: “What went wrong in Iraq and in Afghanistan isn’t the stuff of legend.” And it wasn’t a failure of the military, some readers said.
“I don’t blame the generals, and I especially don’t blame our troops,” VKlip wrote from Philadelphia. “I blame the politicians, who used the fear generated by 9/11 (and possibly the promise of oil) to begin a war with no plans for what to do next.”
Even as Mr. Bolger pierced legends of military battles, he asked that tales of valor be reserved for “the brave men and women who bear the burdens of combat.”
Family and country will honor that valor, one reader said.
“As someone who lost a family member in Afghanistan, I would like to say that he didn’t ‘die for nothing,’” AKS wrote from Illinois. “He died for the men with whom he fought, and saved more than a couple of them.”