And then there was the manner in which Trump conducted himself personally. In an astonishing display of insensitivity, during a 2017 meeting about how to best prosecute the Afghan war, Trump said in Kelly’s presence that the young American soldiers who had died in Afghanistan had died for a worthless cause. Trump said, “We got our boys who are over there being blown up every day for what? For nothing. Guys are dying for nothing. There’s nothing worth dying for in that country.” Kelly had lost a son in Afghanistan, 29-year-old Marine First Lieutenant Robert Kelly. Trump either didn’t know or didn’t care.
This is from Peter Bergen, “The Generals Tried to Keep Trump in Check. What Happens to Foreign Policy Now That They’ve Left?“, Time, December 5, 2019. Yes, believe it or not, Time magazine still exists. This article is excerpted from Bergen’s book Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos.
Notice Bergen’s implicit acceptance [he takes the side of the generals who want the U.S. government to maintain its presence in Afghanistan] of the idea that we should not ignore sunk costs. Bergen’s presumption seems to be that former General John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff at the time, would want the U.S. to stay in Afghanistan because he had lost his son there, and Bergen appears to agree with that desire. But that loss, horrible as it was, was a sunk cost. Trump seemed to understand that.
Kelly’s son is gone. Nothing can get him back. The question is whether losing future U.S. military people is worth it. But, as Trump said, “Guys are dying for nothing.”
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Dec 14 2019 at 9:33am
In what will likely win a Pulitzer Prize, Craig Whitlock has an extensive series in the Washington Post documenting everything that has gone wrong in Afghanistan and efforts that were taken to cover things up. While President Trump was hugely insensitive in his remark in the presence of General Kelly, this was one of the few occasions that he did speak the truth during his time in office. The entire war effort in the Middle East has been a colossal waste of money and personnel with virtually no political gain.
Kurt Schuler
Dec 15 2019 at 6:50am
If Trump really believes that “Guys are dying for nothing,” he should have withdrawn the U.S. military from Afghanistan by now. This is a sloppy way of talking that neither the President nor you should engage in. Consider that under the Taliban, to give one example, the women of Afghanistan were little more than cattle. They were forbidden from getting an education and didn’t even have the freedom to leave the house. Are those freedoms really nothing to you, especially given that you consider yourself a libertarian? Are they nothing to the women of Afghanistan? If you want to say that in your judgment the costs of the war exceed the benefits to the United States, fine, but be precise in your language.
David Henderson
Dec 20 2019 at 5:58pm
You wrote:
True. I can’t control him, but I should have been more careful.
You wrote:
No and no. They are worth a lot, especially to the women of Afghanistan who have not been killed.
You wrote:
You’re right. I should have been precise.
Note, though, that my sunk cost point remains.
Phil H
Dec 16 2019 at 4:31am
I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days, and I think that in the end I am thoroughly persuaded by DH’s point. It leaves Kelly in a tragic position, of course, but he’s a top general, and if his job requires consideration of these issues, claims like Trump’s can’t just be left unspoken in policy discussions out of sympathy for him. It still leaves Trump sounding like a horrible person, but perhaps doing the right thing for his position.
Mark Z
Dec 16 2019 at 9:19pm
I think there’s probably a better way of putting it (one that may actually be correct) that does not assert that “they died for nothing” while maintaining the case for ending the war. And I don’t think saying soldiers died for nothing is productive; in fact it’s a common and natural human emotion to double down on sunk costs as an alternative to accepting a horrifying truth. So if the idea is to put it in such a way to ‘drive home the point’ in the hope of deterring future conflicts, I think it’s more likely to backfire and have the opposite effect. I’d also add, especially with respect to friends and family members of people who died in the war, that there is absolutely no virtue whatsoever in telling people ‘hard truths’ that cannot help them but can only cause them greater pain. There is nothing noble about an atheist trying to convince someone on their deathbed who believes they’re going to heaven that in fact they are not. It’s just a gratuitous cruelty. Unless saying they died for nothing actually convinces people to avoid future conflicts – and again I seriously doubt it does – then politicians should probably, let’s say, rephrase the point in a more sympathetic manner.
David Seltzer
Dec 17 2019 at 6:06pm
Bob McNamara wrote in his memoir, 1995, his Vietnam policy was “wrong, terribly wrong.” That apology coming 30 years after I served there is almost an insult. I say almost as I hope his contrition was genuine.While that travesty cost some 58,000 American lives, it’s estimated over 1,000,000 Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians died in that war. The unseen then became the seen. Today our veterans and the Vietnamese still endure the debilitating effects of Agent Orange.
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