In today’s military incursions in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places, there is the eerie “We’ve seen this before” recollection of America’s service men and women. Those who invested multiple combat tours in these wars or in Vietnam have “seen this before.”

Dr. Ron Glasser has written an honest assessment of the folly of bad policies in “Vietnam and Iraq: a twice-told tale; again, we did know better.”

“For those of us who were part of Vietnam, the confusion, the growing exhaustion of the troops, the suffering, shifting about of priorities and objectives, the pronouncements of success that ignored the reality on the ground, the increasing numbers of casualties had begun to merge the jungles of Vietnam with the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan.”

Harry G. Summers, Jr., a Vietnam combat veteran and instructor at the Army’s War College in Carlisle wrote a definitive book. “In 1982, Harry finally produced On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context, which to this day remains the single most influential postmortem of America’s failure in Vietnam. Newsweek magazine declared it “a classic.” wrote David Zabecki for The Clausewitz Homepage.

We have seen this before! We have seen the waste! We have seen the cover-up! We have seen the insanity of abuse of America’s warriors following badly-crafted national policies. Now it is time to stop the insanity!

POGO praises Representatives’ Support of Army Whistleblower Lt. Col. Daniel Davis”
by Dana Liebelson

“In the last couple weeks, Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis has embarked upon a whistleblowingcampaign of epic proportions: he has alleged to members of the House and Senate, The New York Times, and ArmedForcesJournal that senior military officials are deceiving the American public and Congress about conditions on the ground in Afghanistan. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is pleased to report that some Members of Congress are taking their duty to conduct oversight seriously.

“Six Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle sent a letter on February 14 urging House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to consider Davis’s analysis of the situation in Afghanistan. The letter, which is signed by Representatives Walter Jones (R-NC), Jimmy Duncan (R-TN), Jim McGovern (D-MA), John Garamendi (D-CA), Timothy Johnson (R-IL) and Barbara Lee (D-CA,) also said:

“We think that Lieutenant Davis’ analysis merits attention by the relevant committees of jurisdiction in the U.S. House of Representatives and we respectfully request that you encourage the relevant Chairman to hold hearings as soon as possible and invite Lieutenant Colonel Davis to be a witness.

“The letter by the legislators cites the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) for December 2011—a document prepared by the Director of National Intelligence—as evidence supporting Davis’s analysis. Last month, Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Walter Jones (R-NC) sent a letter to President Obama requesting that the president authorize the declassification and release of the NIE. We also encourage the White House to declassify this document so that the public can see for itself how the two reports overlap.

“‘Members of Congress should have the opportunity to get a full spectrum perspective on the War in Afghanistan,’ said Representative Jones in a press release. ‘There is too much at stake in terms of the lives and limbs of Americans serving in Afghanistan, and in terms of the $10+ billion that Americans are borrowing every month to spend on that war, for Congress to accept something less.’

“We applaud Jones and the other representatives for supporting Davis, and echo their call for relevant committees — such as the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and/or Intelligence Committees—to hold hearings on Afghanistan and ask Davis to testify.

“Davis is a whistleblower who made bold allegations about the war in Afghanistan, but did so in a responsible way: by submitting a classified report to Members of Congress, and only releasing unclassified information to the American public. He is also receiving support from his immediate chain-of-command. As the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan and considers the lessons learned over the past decade, Davis’s disclosures could have a great impact upon future contingency efforts. He deserves our full support.”

Dana Liebelson is POGO’s Beth Daley Impact Fellow

This New York Times article – “In Afghan War, Officer Becomes a Whistle-Blower” – reveals more about the “lipstick and lipservice” of leadership gone awry in the support of badly-thought policies.

“WASHINGTON — On his second yearlong deployment to Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis traveled 9,000 miles, patrolled with American troops in eight provinces and returned in October of last year with a fervent conviction that the war was going disastrously and that senior military leaders had not leveled with the American public.

“Since enlisting in the Army in 1985, he said, he had repeatedly seen top commanders falsely dress up a dismal situation. But this time, he would not let it rest. So he consulted with his pastor at McLean Bible Church in Virginia, where he sings in the choir. He watched his favorite movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” one more time, drawing inspiration from Jimmy Stewart’s role as the extraordinary ordinary man who takes on a corrupt establishment.

“And then, late last month, Colonel Davis, 48, began an unusual one-man campaign of military truth-telling. He wrote two reports, one unclassified and the other classified, summarizing his observations on the candor gap with respect to Afghanistan. He briefed four members of Congress and a dozen staff members, spoke with a reporter for The New York Times, sent his reports to the Defense Department’s inspector general — and only then informed his chain of command that he had done so.

“‘How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?’ Colonel Davis asks in an article summarizing his views titled “Truth, Lies and Afghanistan: How Military Leaders Have Let Us Down.” It was published online Sunday in The Armed Forces Journal, the nation’s oldest independent periodical on military affairs. “No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan,” he says in the article. “But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on.”

“Colonel Davis says his experience has caused him to doubt reports of progress in the war from numerous military leaders, including David H. Petraeus, who commanded the troops in Afghanistan before becoming the director of the Central Intelligence Agency in June.

“Last March, for example, Mr. Petraeus, then an Army general, testified before the Senate that the Taliban’s momentum had been ‘arrested in much of the country’ and that progress was ‘significant,’ though fragile, and ‘on the right azimuth’ to allow Afghan forces to take the lead in combat by the end of 2014.

“Colonel Davis fiercely disputes such assertions and says few of the troops believe them. At the same time, he is acutely aware of the chasm in stature that separates him from those he is criticizing, and he has no illusions about the impact his public stance may have on his career.

“‘I’m going to get nuked,’ he said in an interview last month.

“But his bosses’ initial response has been restrained. They told him that while they disagreed with him, he would not face ‘adverse action,’ he said.

“Col. James E. Hutton, chief of media relations for the Army, declined to comment specifically about Colonel Davis, but he rejected the idea that military leaders had been anything but truthful about Afghanistan.

“’We are a values-based organization, and the integrity of what we publish and what we say is something we take very seriously,’ he said.

“A spokeswoman for Mr. Petraeus, Jennifer Youngblood of the C.I.A., said he ‘has demonstrated that he speaks truth to power in each of his leadership positions over the past several years. His record should stand on its own, as should LTC Davis’ analysis.’

“If the official reaction to Colonel Davis’s campaign has been subdued, it may be partly because he has recruited a few supporters among the war skeptics on Capitol Hill.

“‘For Colonel Davis to go out on a limb and help us to understand what’s happening on the ground, I have the greatest admiration for him,’ said Representative Walter B. Jones, Republican of North Carolina, who has met with Colonel Davis twice and read his reports.

“Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, one of four senators who met with Colonel Davis despite what he called ‘a lot of resistance from the Pentagon,’ said the colonel was a valuable witness because his extensive travels and midlevel rank gave him access to a wide range of soldiers.

“Moreover, Colonel Davis’s doubts about reports of progress in the war are widely shared … ” To continue reading this New York Times article, click here.