Understand the real enemy.

Defending America requires understanding our true interests.

General Milley is right.

General Mark Milley:
     "Be open-minded and widely read. I want to understand White rage. And I'm white."

YouTube comment in opposition:
     "The military's job is to win battles."

Tucker Carlson:
     "He's not just a pig. He's stupid."

General Mark Milley testified in Congress and defended teaching Critical Race Theory along with other topics relating to human relations in an elective course titled Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality. He said,

So what is wrong with understanding … the country which we are here to defend? What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out.

His comments drew criticism on Fox, by Trump at a rally, by GOP officeholders, and by Americans who presume that wars are won primarily by winning battles. Critics of Milley are outraged--the go-to emotion of American politics. The American military should be learning how to fight wars, not learning what critics of American culture and politics think.

I write this blog post as a veteran and casualty of a different war, "the war against the war in Vietnam," a semi-successful effort during the time of my young adulthood to end America's self-destructive war in Vietnam. I was one of the legion of people who opposed that war. That war against the war was waged foolishly and perhaps self-destructively. My generation of college students protected by draft deferments probably prolonged the war by creating a backlash. Nixon soldiered on to prove us wrong.

The irony was complete because the war we opposed was self-destructive in itself. General Westmoreland, who led the strategy in Vietnam, thought we could win by out-killing Asians, so there was a nightly body-count scorecard. The war required we win hearts and minds and you don't do it by killing more of them than they killed of us. America fought because we thought we needed prove we were the world's irresistible and unchallengeable power. In losing, we proved we were not. Then, as luck would have it, by losing and leaving we allowed a proud, independent, and unified Vietnam to form, which then created what America wanted all along, a motivated self-reliant buffer against Chinese expansion. We won by losing. 

The generals apparently learned something someAmericans have not. The war in Vietnam was not a failure of military hardware or the morale of soldiers on the ground. It was a failure of strategy and generalship. We had a fundamental misunderstanding of what war we were fighting.

General Milley is on the right track. 

I write this blog post in the morning, with the lights back on but all the clocks in the house blinking 12:00. The power was off last night. Amid 112 degree weather, the electrical grid failed--in peacetime, all by itself. If the climate scientists are anywhere near right, it will get worse in coming decades. Our infrastructure is vulnerable. The ransomware attacks on a pipeline and the condition of our bridges are as visible and tangible as were the warning creaks and shudders last week prior to the collapse of the Surfside condo. American democracy is only capable of a half-hearted response to our infrastructure problems. That worked in Surfside, until it didn't.

I write this post in the final week of COVID lockdown in Oregon. Over 600,000 Americans have died. There was continual controversy over efforts to slow the disease so that hospitals wouldn't be overwhelmed and to give drug companies more time to create a vaccine. Approximately half of residents in my county refuse vaccination.

I write this post in the aftermath of President Joe Biden's European trip, where he announced the Atlantic Charter was intact and renewed, that NATO was united, and that Russia was still a great superpower threatening Europe but that we would continue to stand in its way. I consider this an effort to reclaim the past that existed in 1960, the American colossus, the indispensable country. "America is Back" reflects an effort to be what we have lost. We aren't the shining beacon of strength and democracy, lighting the world. This isn't the future for America. It isn't even the present. 

Meanwhile, China is investing in Africa and South America and the Near East. We consider it a threat because they are doing what we should be doing. Working with foreign countries to develop their ports and to create trade relationships isn't warfare with guns, but it is advancing a country's interests. We are losing that war because we aren't doing it.

America's great challenges in the 21st century will not be won by students at our military academies who learn to calculate artillery altitudes and strength requirements for portable bridges to carry tanks across the Rhine River. The greatest threats to American security come from behaviors that America does to itself.

A great many people think America's government and economy don't work, so they have lost respect for democratic rules and norms. Currently the anti-democratic force is from Trump and nativist ethno-nationalism, but Pandora's box has been opened. Left authoritarianism is as common as right authoritarianism, and only a minority of young people in their 20s tell Gallup they respect capitalism. They would prefer socialism. They feel left out and blocked by a system that enriches the already-rich, at their expense.

The threats to America are from within because we have problems we are not facing. We need generals who understand that and say it aloud.