Dept of DEFENSE

miltary plane painted to mimic civilian aircraft used in boat attack.

"Focusing on the harmlessness of the target obscures the deeper issue: Why was this weapon employed without the discipline that governs every legitimate use of force in the military?"

Mark Hertling on the El Paso balloon incident:

could be placed several places. given the players within, think it fits here best...

"Below is a set of five questions, and quotes, and even clichés that have stayed with me since first writing about Vietnam-era debacles. And that together make me view the past nine days as the most wantonly self-destructive for the United States in my long life time.

1) ‘HOW DOES THIS END?’

It’s the question everyone is asking, except those in control.

It’s the question the most powerful single military commander in US history—Dwight D. Eisenhower, in charge at D-Day—asked as president, in 1954, about supporting the French effort at Dien Bien Phu. And in 1956, about supporting the British effort in Suez. And, most cold-bloodedly, again in 1956, about supporting the Hungarian freedom fighters in their doomed uprising against the Soviet Union. Eisenhower, who had planned so carefully for the war against Hitler, looked three moves ahead and did not like what he saw. He asked “how does this end?” and decided not to commit the US.

It’s the question John F. Kennedy was reportedly preparing to ask about the trickling-upward commitment of US forces in Indochina, at the time he was killed

It’s the question the first George Bush asked about extending Gulf War combat from Kuwait all the way into Baghdad. He knew the bloody consequences of leaving Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq. But he did not see how an invasion of Iraq could end well. So he stopped.

It’s the question the second George Bush did not ask seriously enough about invading Iraq, ten years later.

And it’s a question that appears not to have been taken seriously by the top of our current chain of command.

2) ‘IN WAR, THE MORAL IS TO THE MATERIAL, AS THREE IS TO ONE.’

This is one version of a long-clichéd quote from Napoleon, which has linguistic complications. In French, Napoleon said morale. This has been rendered in English as meaning either the commitment and spirit of troops—their morale, we might say in English—or the ethical rightness of their cause, its moral basis.

Every military authority I’ve learned from over the decades has stressed the importance of both readings of the word.

-The US insurgents during the Revolutionary War eventually prevailed for many reasons, but among them was a “moral” sense of the cause they were fighting for.

-The varied Vietnamese forces in their nearly century-long struggles against the French, Japanese, American, and Chinese occupiers had a similar sense of purpose. As time went on, US forces asked, Why are we here? The Vietnamese knew why they were there.

-Ukraine is relying on morale, in both senses, for its defiance of superior Russian weaponry and manpower.

-Through the centuries Afghanistan has resisted conquerors, because the land mattered more to the locals than it did to the British, the Soviets, the Americans, or anyone else.

What are US troops being asked to fight for, now, in Iran? In a war against a country four times larger than Iraq, with more than twice as many people? Not even their commander in chief can explain. Israel may have its own answer, leading to its own motivations for its troops. But, as with any other country, its interests and those of the US are distinct.

And the ethical aspects? In this past week, a US submarine torpedoed and sank an Iranian frigate, in international waters. The frigate was returning from a multi-national training exercise, which in previous years US ships had taken part in. Of the 180 or so Iranian crew members on board when the torpedo hit, the only known survivors so far were the 30 or so rescued by a Sri Lankan ship.

In the 1960s, a prize-winning and best-selling novel was An Operational Necessity, by Gwyn Griffin. It was based on the war-crime prosecution of the German U-boat commanders who had torpedoed and sunk an allied freighter in 1944 and killed most of its survivors. Those real-life U-boat commanders were convicted as war criminals.

The stories of My Lai and the “napalm girl” changed America’s course in Vietnam. So did the photos from Abu Ghraib in Iraq. What about the apparent US role in the mass-fatality bombing of a girls’ school in Iran?

It matters to be on the wrong side. And to have the world know that.

3) ‘THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY.’

In many ways, people are goldfish, with only an instant’s short-term memory. Yes, people remember that Bad Bunny did this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. But what about ten years ago? Or even last year? Who was favored in the presidential primaries of 2016? Or the ones before that? I follow football, and politics, and I had to look these things up.

But other memories persist, especially the bitter ones. England, Scotland, and Ireland, through the centuries. The “hundred years of humiliation” for China. The “comfort women” for Korea. The US and Mexico: “So far from God, so close to the United States.” And have I mentioned the different sides in the US Civil War?

The US is erasing so many positive memories now: Of GIs several generations ago liberating people in Europe and Asia. Of Peace Corps volunteers on farms and in classrooms. Of doctors and food aid coming to areas in distress. Of the vast, informal-but-crucial “soft power” network of connections between the US and the rest of the world.

Through our years of travel and residence outside the US, Deb and I have seen countless examples. We’ve found people in rural China—or northern Ghana, in Brazil and Korea and New Zealand, and around the world—who had a cousin at grad school in Michigan, a brother running a store in North Carolina. We have met people who learned English while listening to jazz shows on Voice of America, or by watching Friends on TV. We’ve met people in remote places who might complain about this or that aspect of US policy, but who felt they knew the people, the country, the culture.

Now the memories we are building are instead of bombing runs, and deportations. How long will it take people in Iran to forget the little girls at that school? Very few of today’s Iranians were even alive when the US (specifically the CIA) engineered the overthrow of its elected government in 1953. But that is still a recognized reference.

Now through its weapons the US is building memories of a closed and mean-spirited country, which recognizes no limits other than the whims of its leaders, a power that is to be feared rather than admired, or emulated.

Donald Trump has no memory except for slights and grievances. Marco Rubio tailors his memory to the boss’s changing narrative, hour by hour.

The rest of us, and our children, and their children, will live with these poisoned memories,

4) WHAT IF THE WAR COMES HOME?

This past week, Donald Trump said “I guess” when asked whether attacks on Iran might lead to domestic terrorism in the US.

Back in 2004, the participants in our war game said this was one of the most foreseeable long-term consequences of initiating war with Iran.

As Admiral Mullen said, “it is just too easy to go to war,” because it doesn’t seem to affect most of the public. Until it does.

5. "COMMAND PRESENCE.

The photo below compares two people while they were in charge at the Pentagon.

At the left is George C. Marshall, at a Pentagon press conference in 1951. Multi-war veteran. Retired five-star general. At the time of the photo, a former Secretary of State, a future winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and a serving Secretary of Defense.

At the right is Pete Hegseth, as “Secretary of War.” This was during his ranting presentation last year about “maximum lethality” from slimmed-down “warfighters,” to an audience of 800 admirals and generals summoned from their command posts around the world.

I find no record of George C. Marshall—or Dwight Eisenhower, or Ulysses Grant, or before them George Washington—ever using terms like these, “warfighter” or “maximum lethality.”

And it’s not just a generational change in vocabulary. Leaders like Marshall, Grant, and Eisenhower knew first hand that warfare was of grave importance. Everything in their deadly-earnest demeanor reflected that reality. So did the civilian commanders-in-chief to whom Grant and Eisenhower answered, before becoming commanders-in-chief themselves: Abraham Lincoln. FDR.

The strongest leaders in our history have projected strength through control and calm. Think of John F. Kennedy, during the world’s closest brush with nuclear annihilation, the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962. Think of Martin Luther King Jr’s bearing, as his influence expanded and the mortal threats to him increased.

Then think of the clowns and posturers who now have the controls. They don’t know what they don’t know. They have no idea what they are unleashing. It took years for the United States to get into its quagmire in Vietnam. It took many months to prepare the groundwork for the disaster in Iraq.

These people have changed the world, for the worse, in just nine days. And none of us knows how it will end."

— James Fallows, March 12, 2026, "The Arrogance of Ignorance"

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