CHAPTER 10
No More Fiascos
Harold Smith, Darwin Judge, Charles McMahon, and David Hickman were the last Americans fatalities in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, respectively. They stand at the head of three single-file columns of Americans dead from these wars, arranged in the order they fell in battle. These martial corteges reveal the human value of resolving a failing war. If we had ended the fighting sooner, the first lives to be spared would have been those of Smith, Judge, McMahon, and Hickman. And as we halt the violence a day, a week, or a year earlier, we move down the line, saving more and more of these men and women.
Eventually, as we work down the column, we reach a turning point: the first American soldier to die in an unwinnable cause. It’s a GI killed by a Chinese grenade in the icy wastes of North Korea in 1950. It’s a marine shot by an insurgent sniper in Iraq in 2004. It’s an army private blown up by a Taliban IED in Afghanistan in 2006. Every combatant standing behind this soldier was killed when victory was still possible. Every man ahead fell when a decisive triumph was no longer possible. The goal of losing the right way is to shorten the forward portion of this line.
But there’s another way to save American lives. What if we stopped the war from ever becoming a fiasco? What if we eliminated the turning point and ensured that victory remained on the table? Rather than just losing the right way, can we start winning again?
And if we continue moving down the line, we come to the very first casualty of the war, which begs an even more fundamental question. Can we save this man, and all who stand ahead of him, by avoiding the conflict at all?
To turn America’s military experience around, we must maneuver more skillfully through the terrain of modern warfare. We need a set of guiding ideas for an era defined by American power, global interstate peace, internal conflict, and an interconnected globe. Here, we can briefly outline six core principles.
Prepare for the Age of Civil Wars
Sun-tzu wrote that victory in war comes before the fight is joined, by creating the proper conditions for success. How can Washington prepare more effectively for future campaigns?
The answer is to ensure adequate training for the kind of wars we’re actually going to face: nation-building and counterinsurgency missions. Stabilization operations are tough and wearying work, but in some shape or form they’re inevitable. In 2007, Robert Gates said that unconventional wars were “the ones most likely to be fought in the years ahead.”1 The following year, Gates remarked, “Think of where our forces have been sent and have been engaged over the last forty-plus years. Vietnam, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and more. In fact, the first Gulf War stands alone in over two generations of constant military engagement as a more or less traditional conventional conflict from beginning to end.”2
It’s really a question of math. We live in a world where nine out of ten wars are civil wars. Since Vietnam, enemy states have killed barely three hundred Americans, whereas insurgents and terrorists have killed over ten thousand Americans. In this conflict environment, almost every conceivable military path leads to a stabilization operation, whether we’re battling terrorist networks in a foreign civil war, launching a humanitarian intervention, or contributing U.S. soldiers to an international peacekeeping mission.
Even the rare exceptions—conventional interstate wars—often turn into stabilization missions. The campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq both evolved from regime change operations into extended nation-building campaigns. As the so-called Pottery Barn Rule holds, you break it, you own it.
We’re also likely to engage in irregular conflicts because the enemy gets a vote. Given our dominance at conventional war and our struggles at counterinsurgency, adversaries will gravitate toward guerrilla tactics.
For better or worse, this is the world we live in. Therefore, we must prepare for the reality of modern war. It means forging the U.S. military into a tool with a full spectrum of capabilities—less like a rapier and more like a Swiss Army Knife. It means creating an adaptable institution that can out-innovate insurgents and terrorists. It means investing in engineers, Special Operations Forces, and foreign advisory teams. It means readying soldiers for the human dimension of war, from language training to lessons on how to dine with a sheikh.3
These capabilities aren’t cheap. But they’re less expensive than purchasing big-ticket hardware designed for battling enemy countries, like the F-35 warplane—the most expensive defense program in history with a lifetime price tag of over one trillion dollars.
How well has Washington adapted to modern conflict? In the fierce crucible of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military was forged into a more effective counterinsurgency force. The landmark 2006 U.S. Army and Marine Corps field manual, FM 3-24, placed stability operations at the heart of the armed forces’ mission.4 The army also created the Irregular Warfare Center at Fort Leavenworth, in Kansas, to institutionalize the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq. The military even practiced counterinsurgency by hiring hundreds of Iraqi Americans through the Screen Actors Guild to play the part of Iraqi civilians and rebels. These efforts paid a dividend. By 2007, Iraqi insurgents needed to use six times as many bombs to kill one American soldier compared to when IEDs first appeared.5
But today this progress is at risk because of a powerful backlash in the United States against the whole idea of nation-building and counterinsurgency. The U.S. military and the American people are traditionally skeptical about stabilization missions and see a soldier’s true vocation as fighting and winning the nation’s wars—meaning conventional interstate wars. In the wake of exhausting guerrilla conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, there’s a strong desire to return to our comfort zone by shifting the focus of training, preparation, and weapon procurement to campaigns against enemy countries.
A member of the Irregular Warfare Center teaches the principles of counterinsurgency. (U.S. Army photo)
In 2012, the Pentagon announced, “U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations.”6 The Obama administration’s famous pivot from the Middle East to the Pacific is really a turn from nation-building in places like Iraq toward interstate competition against opponents like China.
The pivot to interstate war is a seductive pirouette. After all, the last decade has starkly revealed the challenges of nation-building. Creating an effective state in a divided society like Iraq or Afghanistan is a long and grueling business, and the arrival of Americans for a few years doesn’t offer a simple shortcut. So let’s train for something we’re actually good at—smashing tyrants.
Another argument for the pivot is that failure in a major conventional war could be more costly than receiving a bloody nose from guerrillas. Therefore, the focus on counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan may have distracted the U.S. military from its core mission of interstate campaigns. Colonel Gian Gentile, a professor at West Point, argued that a “hyper-emphasis on counterinsurgency puts the American Army in a perilous condition. Its ability to fight wars consisting of head-on battles using tanks and mechanized infantry is in danger of atrophy.”7
But the pivot to conventional interstate fighting is the real peril. By neglecting our readiness for nation-building operations, we’re raising the odds of future fiascos. Looking ahead, stabilization missions are virtually inevitable. Indeed, the more we signal our distaste for counterinsurgency, the more likely an opponent is to play the insurgent card. Nation-building is certainly challenging, but the answer is to prepare as effectively as possible rather than hamstring ourselves by deliberately eroding our capabilities.
And while it’s true that failure in a major interstate campaign would be costly, it’s also unlikely. After decades of investment in conventional war, the United States has a massive advantage over its rivals, and this edge won’t disappear any time soon. By contrast, debacles in future counterinsurgency campaigns are all too easy to imagine and, as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially carry a very high price in blood and treasure.8
The backlash means that the United States is in danger of losing its proficiency at nation-building. During a time of budget pressures, the ax may fall disproportionately on stabilization capabilities. In 2014 the army decided to close the Irregular Warfare Center, even though irregular warfare is the dominant kind of global conflict.
The pivot toward conventional war is laying the groundwork for another military debacle. If American troops fought tank battles or aerial dogfights with defective equipment, there would be an outcry. Sending soldiers into stabilization missions without adequate preparation is just as scandalous. Visit section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where the graves of many Afghanistan and Iraq War casualties lie.
Fight Fewer Wars
Washington must ensure the U.S. military is ready for modern war, and then employ this tool with greater discretion. Put simply, we’re too quick to seize the sword. There have been five major American wars since 1945, and two of them should never have been fought: Vietnam and Iraq.
The answer is greater restraint, or setting a higher bar for the use of force. This is not an excuse for inaction or a retreat into isolation. American leadership helps underpin global order. It does mean casting aside chimerical nightmares, like the fall of Vietnam triggering a domino effect of Communist gains across East Asia. And it means discarding alluring dreams, like regime change in Iraq causing a cascade of freedom in the Middle East.
How should we pick our fights in the dark age of American warfare? Of course, there’s no simple formula for determining when to act. In the end, war is always a gamble. Fortunately, we do have some control over the odds.
Decisions to use force should be based on a careful calculation of the stakes in terms of U.S. interests and values, as well as the relevant military and political costs, benefits, and risks. How big is the upside of war and are these gains worth the potential dangers? Have alternative nonviolent avenues been fully explored, such as diplomacy, covert action, or passing the buck to local allies? Is the plan to use force feasible? Are the political goals clearly understood? Have we considered the potential for unanticipated consequences? Which weak links could derail the plan?9
Campaigns involving clear-cut enemy aggression and threats to core American security needs would pass the test—including the Korean War, the Gulf War, and the Afghanistan War. By contrast, the Vietnam War was based on illusions about the strength and resolve of North Vietnam, the legitimacy of South Vietnam, and the negative consequences of allowing unification on Hanoi’s terms. And the Iraq War was an entirely avoidable misadventure, where the threat was distant and the use of force was far from a last resort.
Given America’s recent experience, we should rarely, if ever, willingly start a major counterinsurgency campaign. But other kinds of stabilization operations may be appropriate, provided the likely costs and risks are tolerable. In some cases, nation-building could be essential, for example, after a regime change operation. Washington should also be ready to contribute to peacekeeping missions, where international forces oversee a peace agreement reached by the combatants. Peacekeeping has a fairly successful recent record. Indeed, it’s precisely because entrenched insurgencies are so intractable that it can be worth deploying troops to prevent a civil war from breaking out, or to stop it from restarting. During the 1990s, the U.S.-led peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo stabilized the war-torn Balkan provinces with zero American casualties.
The United States should also be ready to intervene in egregious cases of genocide or mass killing. Although Washington has often been too eager to fight, there are occasions where we didn’t act but should have. In 1994, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans could have been saved from genocide at modest risk.
Identifying the questions to pose before using force is the relatively easy part. What really matters is how these questions are assessed. We should reform the structure of decision-making to encourage an open and critical debate about war—especially a war of choice like Vietnam or Iraq.
One option is to create a devil’s advocate by picking a member of the foreign policy team to deliberately offer a skeptical view of the likely fortunes of war. An even better idea may be to form a murder board, or a committee of notables tasked with finding flaws in a military plan and killing the idea. A single devil’s advocate can be ignored; a whole array of devils is harder to dismiss.
Of course, reforming institutions is one thing: Lower-ranked officials must also be empowered to offer criticism, and the top brass should be ready to listen. In chapter 6, we saw the dangers of an overly hierarchical culture when life-and-death decisions are being made—either in the cockpit or the Oval Office. The White House can’t be the Korean Air of governing bodies, where officials are unwilling to point out looming threats for fear of committing professional suicide. Instead, presidents must set the tone by signaling a willingness to hear dissent. A truly confident leader can accept criticism without projecting the image of an administration in disarray.
Another useful way of sobering up hawks is to conduct a thought exercise before the war begins, where officials imagine what would happen if the campaign fails and we need to withdraw. In other words, leaders can think through the challenges involved with the surge, talk, and leave exit strategy before pulling the trigger. What will the world look like if the war becomes unwinnable? How will we dial down the goals and give up cherished dreams? How will we negotiate with a hated enemy, rally a divided home front, and craft a narrative of withdrawal?
Before heading to Vegas for a quick-fire wedding, it’s wise to spend some time sitting in the divorce courts, watching the marital exit strategies unfold. In a similar vein, contemplating the difficulties of withdrawing the United States from a tough campaign may cause even the most bellicose leader to think twice.
Legalize the War
Let’s assume the military is prepared for an era of civil wars, and the proposed use of force has passed the murder board. What next? We need to legalize the war effort by fighting according to domestic, international, and local rules. Employing force legally involves an inherent trade-off: more legitimacy in return for less freedom of maneuver. But in the dark age of civil wars, when conflicts are often prolonged, unpredictable, and politically divisive, the cost-benefit analysis tilts decisively in favor of playing by the rules.
First, dark-age wars should be legal domestically, which means securing congressional approval. Legal scholars debate whether the president is constitutionally obliged to receive the blessing of Congress before using force.10 Whether or not such an injunction exists, there are powerful wider incentives to build support down Pennsylvania Avenue. For a start, reaching out for legislative approval may encourage a healthy debate about the costs, benefits, and risks of going to war.11 In addition, seeking legislative support can forge political consensus around the prospective military campaign and signal unity and resolve to foreign allies and enemies. The dark age is no time to go to war with an uncertain country. Missions involving nation-building and counterinsurgency often test the public’s patience. If the glue binding the war effort together comes unstuck before we’ve even started fighting, we risk a debilitating political rift—especially if unexpected problems arise.
Second, dark-age wars should be legal internationally, with multilateral backing and UN Security Council authorization. Constructing a broad international coalition involves a great many headaches. Allies may demand a quid pro quo in exchange for their support. Weaker partners can even actively hinder the war effort. More than three dozen countries provided troops in Afghanistan, and they each had their own rules of engagement. Some states restricted their forces to the relatively peaceful north of the country—marching away from the sound of the guns.
Broadening the international coalition for war may feel like herding cats, but it’s usually worth the effort. For one thing, the degree of allied support is a useful barometer of the wisdom of the mission. If a close ally like Britain refuses to fight—as in Vietnam—it’s a stark warning about the prudence of the campaign. What do they know that we don’t?
And there are also practical benefits to fighting a multilateral war. Allies can share the burden by providing troops, money, intelligence, and bases. Multilateralism may also help us compete more effectively with the insurgents for global legitimacy. Guerrillas usually need outside backing to win. The rebels’ degree of external support—and perhaps the course of the war—will wax or wane depending on international beliefs about the justice of America’s campaign.
To illustrate the value of multilateralism, we can contrast Washington’s two major wars against Iraq. In the 1991 Gulf War, the United States fought with UN authorization and a broad coalition of support. Saudi Arabia and Japan bankrolled the war effort to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, and Washington may even have turned a profit.
In 2003, however, the White House invaded Iraq with no UN approval and limited international support. When the insurgency emerged, the United States was left to face the gathering storm almost alone. John Abizaid, the former head of Central Command, told me, “There was plenty of time to build a solid international coalition if we had more patience. The military is your last resort; building a coalition is your first resort.”12
Third, dark-age wars should be legal locally, by prioritizing the rule of law during stabilization missions. One of the main principles of COIN doctrine is to win hearts and minds by out-governing the guerrillas. This means using force with restraint. And it means creating a justice system that can operate more effectively than insurgent courts. In a world of globalization and camera phones, abuses can quickly go viral, magnifying the damage. When pictures emerged of the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, one U.S. corporal said, “Some assholes have just lost the war for us.”13
Start at the End
How should we plan for victory? Washington often begins wars by focusing on the initial blows and neglecting the ultimate political goals. The architects of the Iraq invasion, for example, saw regime change as the main objective and postwar stabilization as a secondary concern—partly because they assumed it would be easy. As a result, the United States achieved tactical success and strategic defeat.
Achieving victory in the dark age requires thinking through the military endgame, and making extensive preparations for the postwar order. Clausewitz advised against taking the first step in war “without considering the last.”14 Or, as Petraeus asked about Iraq in 2003, “Tell me, how does this end?”15
The traditional approach to military planning is to engineer victory by identifying our objectives and then creating a road map that works toward this end state. In a regime-change mission, for example, we can move through what the military terms Phase I (deterrence and engagement), Phase II (initial operations to seize the initiative), Phase III (major combat operations), and Phase IV (postcombat stabilization).
An alternative approach is to reverse engineer victory, or work backward from the endgame. Reverse engineering means examining an intact product with a known function, and then taking it apart to see how it was created. Reverse engineering victory means starting with the end result in war, “taking it apart,” and seeing how we got there.
We should begin by visualizing the desired finale in as much detail as possible. How much territory does America control? What does the target country’s political system and economy look like? What is the timeframe for achieving these goals? Before invading Iraq, for example, we might have outlined a plausible conception of the country as a fairly stable and representative state by, say, 2006.
We can then work backward from this future vision. What’s the final step before reaching the end state? What’s the second-to-last step? What will be required one month before the target date? How about six months or one year? This path can be broken down into short-term actions and milestones. With Iraq, for example, we could have worked backward from a stable country in 2006 through the intermediate stages, such as overseeing elections, creating effective security forces, and so on.
Reverse engineering victory offers several valuable benefits. First of all, it’s an antidote to short-termism. If we plan ahead, today’s world is cast in bright light, whereas the finale is usually murky. We’re therefore tempted to focus on the first steps we can clearly identify and hope that everything somehow works out. By contrast, starting at the end forces officials to illuminate the denouement by imagining this outcome in detail.
Furthermore, reverse engineering victory provides a reality check. If the exercise of creating a plausible path from the end state is too hard, we may need to rethink the whole endeavor. Working backward can therefore mitigate the overconfidence that often infects wartime planning. We tend to underestimate the time, blood, and treasure required to stabilize a foreign land. Abizaid told me, “Some of the assumptions behind the invasion of Iraq, like it would be similar to the liberation of France, suggest naïveté.”16
Reverse engineering victory can also reveal unexpected obstacles, challenges, or opportunities. Working backward may show that certain steps in the plan are fairly straightforward to map out—for example, a plausible timetable for elections during the stabilization phase. If Baghdad has a representative regime in 2006, we need national elections in 2005. But other aspects of the plan may be extremely hard to project, such as building regional backing for the new government. These uncertainties should then be factored into the decision whether or not to wage war.
Reverse engineering victory may also show that a seemingly minor move early in the war could turn out to be critical later on. Capablanca used to work backward from checkmate. By thinking through the second-to-last move, the third-to-last move, and so on, he discovered that a small positional edge at the start would ultimately prove decisive. The same possibility exists with war. By starting at the end and working backward, we may find that an apparently trivial move at the beginning—say, allying with a minor local leader—could eventually prove invaluable as the political arena opens up.
How speculative is this exercise? The proposed path backward will be more or less tentative depending on the length, complexity, and difficulty of the military campaign. In a relatively straightforward operation, officials may be able to follow the proposed road map with some confidence. When fighting more powerful enemies or in conflicts involving extensive postwar stabilization, these steps will be more difficult to map out. But here the exercise remains valuable—indeed it may be more valuable—as a creative thought exercise to identify challenges, opportunities, and uncertainties.
Engineering victory and reverse engineering victory are complementary tools. We can end up with two paths: from the origin to the destination and from the destination to the origin. Comparing and integrating the two routes may reveal the optimum course.
Use Decisive Forces
We can further improve the odds of success by employing sufficient capabilities to achieve the mission. Clausewitz wrote, “A short jump is certainly easier than a long one, but no one wanting to get across a wide ditch would begin by jumping halfway.”17 Similarly, when going to war, we shouldn’t begin by jumping halfway or using too few troops. Instead, the means must be matched with the ends. According to political scientist Richard Betts, American leaders “liked to use force frequently but not intensely, when the reverse combination would have been wiser.”18
Stabilizing foreign territory is not about decisive force in the sense of massive firepower. Indiscriminate violence may simply alienate the population and recruit more insurgents. Rather, the answer is decisive forces, or sending enough soldiers to take control. In the rare circumstances where we need to occupy an entire country, we shouldn’t intervene on the cheap. Instead, we should accept responsibility and go in big right away, by deploying sufficient troops to create order. If we had invaded Iraq with a larger military footprint, we might have prevented the vicious cycle of sectarian violence that spiraled downward.19
Won’t a large footprint inspire a nationalist backlash? Intervention in a culturally alien society can provoke an antibody response from local traditionalists. But attacking with fewer troops will do little to diminish this resistance. After all, we’re still occupying the country. A smaller force may, however, produce a very real reduction in security. Therefore, trying to sidestep a nationalist backlash with a small footprint can produce the worst of all worlds: enough Americans soldiers to inspire opposition but too few to provide stability.20
The foreign public may accept the presence of American forces on a temporary basis if they bring order. Despite Afghanistan’s history as the graveyard of empires, the majority of Afghan people initially welcomed international troops. Similarly, during the Iraq War, polls showed that residents of Baghdad didn’t like the presence of coalition soldiers—but they were also wary of an immediate withdrawal given the lack of security.21
Beware of Crusades
Americans often go to war with crusading fervor and a moralistic view of the campaign as good against evil. Compared to other rich democracies, Americans are unusually religious and sometimes see U.S. soldiers as spiritual warriors engaged in a sacred quest. Americans are also committed to the founding creed of freedom, democracy, and individual rights, which encourages a missionary impulse to spread our values. And after suffering traumatic attacks like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, moralism can take a more wrathful tone as we look to exact righteous vengeance. Seeing conflict as good against evil shapes how we fight—sometimes in dangerous ways. The answer is not to adopt an unprincipled view of war but instead to temper our moralism with hardheaded pragmatism.22
When the United States fights a foreign country, Americans usually want the campaign to end with the tyrant’s overthrow and a surrender ceremony, as in Tokyo Bay in 1945. Any lesser result seems unworthy of our nation’s ideals.23
But it’s often wise to fight for more limited goals. We can still win a campaign even if the enemy dictator stays in power. After all, America’s sole victory in major war after 1945 was achieved with restricted aims. During the 1991 Gulf War, George H. W. Bush freed Kuwait but decided against marching on Baghdad to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
It was a smart call. U.S. allies opposed expanding the war, and toppling Saddam would have destroyed the coalition. Regime change in Iraq would also have been illegal under international law, because the United Nations mandate only covered the liberation of Kuwait. And occupying Baghdad would have burdened the United States with the task of stabilizing postwar Iraq.
U.S. strategic interests favored keeping the war limited. But that’s not how most Americans saw it. When the Gulf War began, a crusading spirit gripped the country. Americans rallied around the flag, and Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA” became the theme tune of the campaign. The public saw Saddam Hussein as a demon and the second coming of Hitler. Over 70 percent of Americans wanted to overthrow the Iraqi dictator.24
Fighting for restricted goals in the Gulf was the correct decision but it cut against the grain of American culture. In the end, Bush received remarkably little credit for the Gulf War. The following year, he lost his bid for reelection—a result that Saddam greeted with massive celebrations in Baghdad.
Pragmatism about war aims is also critical in a stabilization mission. When creating order in a foreign country, we should think very carefully before trying to construct a beacon of freedom. Fashioning a representative government and suppressing an entire insurgency usually require a huge investment of time, money, and manpower. In an impoverished society like Afghanistan—which has a literacy rate lower than that of America in the 1600s—creating Western liberal democracy in one generation is an impossible dream.25 As John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013, told me: “Campaign objectives must be aligned with the realities you can achieve in a country that is tied for dead last as most corrupt.”26
Instead, we may be able to protect our core interests and values by pursuing the more limited goal of ugly stability. The allied regime may be able to coexist with, or even cooperate with, some of the guerrilla groups through formal or informal spheres of influence. This kind of messy outcome is not ideal, but it could be tolerable and cost-effective.
A moralistic view of war can also make it hard to negotiate with enemies. The best time to pursue peace talks is often when the adversary is on the run and we have maximum leverage. But this is exactly when Americans are least willing to bargain. Imbued with a sense of righteousness and with the military wind at our back, we resist outreach to evildoers. Instead, we wait until the war effort starts spiraling downward before reluctantly embracing diplomacy.
It took almost a decade before we began serious negotiations with the Taliban. As Stanley McChrystal told me, “We should have started talking in 2003.”27 The insurgents’ fortunes were then at a low ebb, and they might have offered major concessions.28 At the same time, the Taliban were unlikely to disappear anytime soon. They enjoyed sanctuaries in Pakistan and a base of support among Pashtuns. And, in addition, international forces in Afghanistan were few and far between. Sooner or later we would have to deal with the insurgents. So why not talk when we still held the best cards?
It’s true, as McChrystal told me, that the Taliban were disorganized in 2003, and it’s not clear if they yet represented a coherent partner. But at the very least, we could have outlined an inclusive vision for Afghanistan’s future, with a place for the Taliban and its Pashtun constituency and a rehabilitation program for former Taliban.
Back in 2003, however, the diplomatic option was never even considered. The hawkish American mood after 9/11, the moralism of the Bush administration, and the tendency to lump the Taliban and Al Qaeda together as the epitome of evil meant the idea of negotiating with the enemy was dismissed out of hand. Overly confident and overly wrathful, the United States missed its chance.
The Pity of War
The single-file columns of American dead from Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq take their place among all the lines of wartime fatalities in history—forming a vast echelon of parallel rows. Here are the fallen warriors from Gilgamesh’s epic adventures in ancient Mesopotamia, the Roman struggles against the Germanic tribes, the War of 1812, the First Anglo-Afghan War, the world wars, the French war in Algeria, the Soviet quagmire in Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a thousand other campaigns.
At the head of the American column from World War I is Private Henry N. Gunther, from East Baltimore. On the last day of the war, November 11, 1918, he fixed his bayonet and dashed toward the German lines, shouting, “Let’s get those SOBs.” Gunther may have had a death wish. He was gunned down at 10:59 a.m.—one minute before the war ended at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.29
Augustin Trébuchon stands at the head of the French line of dead from the Great War. He was the final French soldier to fall on November 11, killed fifteen minutes before the war ended. Paris was so ashamed that some of its soldiers died on the last day of the fighting, when the armistice had already been agreed, that it backdated their headstones to say that they were killed on November 10. Even today, the French Defense Ministry’s website of war casualties claims, quite wrongly, that Trébuchon “Mort pour la France le 10-11-1918.”30
The line of British dead from World War I is over seven hundred thousand strong. The column includes my great-grandmother’s first husband, John Margerison, who died in April 1918, just a few months before the armistice. He stands nearly nine-tenths of the way toward the front of the line. Yet the final tenth of casualties arrayed ahead of Margerison—this British decimation—is thirty miles long.
Some of these processions of men and women fell in the course of winning a great victory. But many of the columns stretch far into the distance because countries became trapped in a failing war and couldn’t find a way out. True leaders know how to win, and they also know the right way to lose.