Garbage, Lies, and Uncertainties
Garbage, Lies, and Uncertainties
Deception vs. Risk in War
by Bing West
Reprinted with Permission by Marine Corps Gazette
Garbage, Lies, and Uncertainties (Full PDF Article)
This article addresses why assessments were poor in Iraq and what can be done to improve risk assessment in Afghanistan. Seven months after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, retired Marine Gen Anthony C. Tony” Zinni gave a blistering speech. My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam,” he said, where we heard the garbage and lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is it happening again?”1 The audience of Navy and Marine officers rose in applause, presumably cheering a criticism of civilian officials, and not of themselves.
That was a misleading illusion. In Vietnam, generals as well as policymakers and politicians contributed to failure. In 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered GEN William C. Westmoreland, the commander in South Vietnam, to undertake a strategy to attrit [sic]… [the Communist forces] at a rate as high as their capability to put men into the field.”2 Westmoreland enthusiastically championed the attrition strategy. Inside the military, only the Marines dissented. Overall, the U.S. military command agreed with a strategy that substituted physical for moral determination and led to body counts as the measure of progress. McNamara gradually came to disbelieve the military reports and quietly turned against the war.
Thus there was garbage” in the form of body counts inflated by the military and lies” (deception) by a Secretary of Defense who did not believe in his own strategy, plus a Joint Chiefs of Staff that did not demur in a flawed strategy. Generals and civilian officials alike shared responsibility for the conduct of the war.
