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15 Apr, 5 tweets, 1 min read
If you wonder why I bristle at "forever war" terminology about AFG, imagine a war where far more Americans are killed - say, 35K- there's never a peace treaty, and we stay for another 70 years to help nation-build.
Totally unacceptable! Insane! Forever!

That would be Korea.

/1
This is not an argument for staying in Afghanistan. It's an argument for making sure that when we debate the use of force and the risk to our security, we don't get sloppy with terms like "war" just to engage in political point-scoring. I think leaving AFG is unavoidable now. /2
I think Trump did it wrong and caused a lot of damage. Biden's doing it better, but it's still the best of a lot of bad options, in part because we obsessed on the word "war" which implies that any end is either "victory" or "defeat," neither of which is going to happen here. /3
Every use of military force is not "war." Every mass attack is not "terrorism." If you let words lead you to solutions instead of thinking about what words mean - in law and as policy - you will make bad laws and bad policies.
/4
We occupied a country to end a threat. Best we could do. We used military means to secure a shot at administering a basically ungovernable region. We likely prevented more terror attacks. Now we're leaving. Sometimes, that's what foreign engagements look like.
/5x

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Tom Nichols Profile picture
16 Apr
Just to continue pissing people off about this, civilians who talk about "forever wars" were not "at war." We were never asked to sacrifice a damn thing. Volunteers were in combat and in danger in two short actual wars and then in protracted, preventive security ops. /1
Americans wanted to be "at war" to gain clear "victory" in places where that wasn't possible. We destroyed AQ, the Hussein regime, and most of ISIS. All things that made us more secure, and then we said: "Okay, just keep doing whatever it is that's working, we're busy." /2
As @dandrezner once wrote, U.S. governing elites were not constrained by foreign policy issues because the public doesn't really care about. The military was war weary and overstretched, but the public just didn't care that much, no matter how much they say they did. /3
Read 12 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
15 Apr
Part of the problem all along has been the "forever war" moniker that isolationists of the right and left stuck on this. It's not a war. It was policing and prevention. But we're not allowed to say that. So it became "America's longest war" long after it wasn't a war. /1
There were other problems: No military commanders wanted to accept that they couldn't "solve" this, so they kept saying "it's going well." Sure it was, if you mean "not a base for another 9/11," which is a good metric. /2
And yes, the early years were full of optimism that we could build a stable nation out of AFG. This was too big a job and we weren't ever going to commit to something that size, esp by using the military. /3
Read 7 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
11 Apr
I am being a bear about the WMD historical record is not to rehab Bush and especially not Rumsfeld (who anyone who knew me in 2002-2006 could tell you I despised). I am doing so in part because a lot of good people you've never heard of were doing their best to figure it out. /1
One of the things I learned writing a book about preventive war is that a lot of people in the U.S. and Europe who worked these issues were genuinely worried and weren't sure what they were seeing. They were terrified of getting it wrong. /2
The political pressure on them to find a way to rationalize taking out Saddam was intense, but the idea of "taking out Saddam" was not as reviled as it is now, no matter what revisionism you're being fed. The idea that everyone was lying is shitting on decent people. /3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
11 Apr
"I think that our policy to change regimes is a good one. We should support a new regime in Iraq. And I think we should try the arms inspection one more time, because I think we also have big long-term benefits in cooperation with our allies through the United Nations." /1
"I don't think it will be a great military problem if we do it. You know, our guys did great there the last time, in the Gulf War. We're stronger, and he's weaker than he was then." /2
"The security challenge will be, you can't surprise him. You've got to move a lot of people in. And if he has chemical and biological agents, AND I BELIEVE HE DOES, he would have no incentive not to use them then, if he knew he was going to be killed anyway and deposed."
/3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
11 Apr
Well, thanks to @besttrousers for dropping the Iraq WMD grenade in my lap - you shall pay, Matt - but one thing to remember is that Saddam could have screwed over Bush and Blair by complying with UN demands at the last minute. In fact, U.S. was worried he'd do that. /1
@besttrousers Saddam's own generals later were debriefed and said stuff like "Well, my unit didn't have them, but the units near me did." When you're so good at this your own generals think they exist, you can imagine that foreign intel agencies aren't betting on the under. /2
@besttrousers No major intel agency anywhere dissented from the basic view that Iraq was hiding WMD. Weapons inspectors wanted more time to prove a negative, that Iraq *didn't* have them. Duelfer later found none, but intent to preserve the WMD programs for quick restart. /3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
1 Apr
I think where @fmkaplan and @NarangVipin I are getting our wires crossed on nuclear strategy is that Fred is thinking of the SIOP Kennedy was briefed on where we hit China just to be sure, to which USMC commandant Shoup viscerally objected. Fred is right, we had that plan. /1
@fmkaplan @NarangVipin But "counterforce," the idea that we could strike military targets *first* and hope for some sort of cease-fire and "intra-war deterrence" was built in to our strategy. This was not a Reagan innovation. It was aspirational but limited by bomber slowness and missile accuracy. /2
What looks like a "counterforce revolution" later is just better technology that lets us decrease the megatonnage we're throwing at the same targets, but the idea was still to hit military targets first, limit the damage, and then melt everything else if there's no letup. /3x
Read 4 tweets

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