America’s Last Two Greatest Generals – A Report from the Future

Report from the Future: How America won the war that wasn’t a war & therefore couldn’t be won. Show Date: July 1, 2010 with Dr. Joyce Starr

General Stanley McChrystal -  handsome in a craggy way that soldiers respect and women adore – was a brilliant warrior who despised killing.

General David Petraeus – looking more like a Harvard professor than a soldier -  favored brains over brawn.

Both men walked into traps set by fawners who favored (or pretended to favor) their views.

General Stanley lost his past; General Dave lost his future.

Listen to the audio file here and/or enjoy the transcript below:

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The war that couldn’t be won was in a place that few Americans cared about. Those who cared most couldn’t be seen but they received a fortune for caring.

So why did America go to a war that wasn’t a war and couldn’t be won in a place most Americans didn’t care about?

The stated explanation focused on foreign terrorists who killed Americans in New York.

The majority of these terrorists held Saudi passports, but their leader lived in a cave in a country full of poppy seed plants. And that’s where he trained them to attack the most prestigious building in New York City.

The world knew that he lived in a cave because he often sent video tapes to the media filmed in one cave or another – warning that he would continue his killing spree. And everyone was furious.

But the real reasons were more complex. First, American and international drug companies needed all the poppy seeds they could control in order to churn them into billions of little cocainated pills.

Secondly, a trillion dollars worth of precious minerals and diamonds were buried beneath the rocks of this impoverished country.

The mineral discovery was revealed nearly a decade after the war against the man in a cave began, though All-Powerful men knew it from the start.

Americans were shocked to learn that their soldier sons were dying for a dirt-poor country that was really dirt-rich.

But since the news flash was overtaken the very next day by shocking developments concerning the finger of a Lady named Ga Ga, the trillion was quickly forgotten.

The man in a cave had many supporters, mostly too young to drive a car in America. Instead, his boy-soldiers drove our finest troops into the ground with the guns that we provided before we went to war against the man in a cave.

For reasons that no one could explain, American troops were often placed in harm’s way – especially when the world wasn’t watching.

Platoons were even ordered to fight from basins surrounded by mountains -  called kill zones – where we let the enemy kill our soldiers in order to keep the war that wasn’t a war going.

Platoons were also ordered to fight without adequate supplies and water. When enough died or were wounded, we withdrew those who survived and left the kill zones to their killers.

The soldiers complained, but few were listening, least of all the All-Powerful men who couldn’t be named or blamed. In fact, the All-Powerful men who ran the war that couldn’t be won were invisible. They knew who they were, but no one else could see them.

Even former and current Presidents, Secretaries of Defense, Generals and Members of Congress were ignorant about the All-Powerful men who pulled the strings – letting the Officially Powerful believe the war that couldn’t be won was really their idea.

And a grand, strategic idea at that. Or so they believed, or wanted to believe, or didn’t believe, but we will never really know.

What we do know is that there were no All-Powerful women in the invisible club, except as as wives, lovers and massage therapists. How do we know that? Because no woman alive at the time was so greedy or vile as to trade money and power for the life of another woman’s son.

And so it went, until one day, America declared victory by losing the war that couldn’t be won – withdrawing the remnants of the greatest colonels and generals who would never be and replacing them with platoons of geologists, drillers and bankers.

The next generation of last great generals had been killed or injured, leaving a gaping wound in America’s military capability – all according to plan.

The man who lived in a cave was never found.

The Invisible men who instigated and secretly managed the war were by now so filthy rich that they became the most hated people on the planet.

But then the most amazing thing happened, which until today, absolutely no one – least of all the press – can explain.

The more they were hated, the more visible they became. Soon, these invisible men became hunted prey just like the soldiers they sent to die in kill zones. But now, everyone in America wanted them dead.

The price on their heads was so high that they fled to caves in the dirt-rich country they plundered for diamonds, minerals and poppy seeds.

The man who lived in the cave but was never found captured these men, chained them to one another, whipped them daily, gave them little water and forced them to sleep with their faces in the dirt.

He even let young boys use them for target practice, a bullet here, an arrow there – so long as the Once-All-Powerful men lived to suffer for another day.

How do we know that? Because the man in a cave sent video tapes to the media. And Americans secretly cheered, because now they hated his All-Powerless captives even more than they remembered hating him.

American Security at Risk: Afghan War, North Korea Nuclear Missile Attacks. Can We Win?

Rights Radio Power Hour: Is the Afghanistan war winnable? What power do we really have against North Korea missile launch attacks and nuclear weapons? Dr. Joyce Starr interviews Dr. William Taylor, Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Show Dates: 9/17/09 & 9/24/09.

Elected to the Infantry Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame, Colonel Taylor was director of debate at West Point. He was awarded the Air Medal for Heroism in Combat in Vietnam in 1968. Dr. Taylor joined the Center for Strategic & International Studies in 1981 and served as Senior Vice President and Director of the International Security Program. General David Petraeus – Commander of the Central Command – was his student at West Point.

UPDATE! SECRET REPORT FIRST DISCUSSED ON RIGHTS RADIO ON SEPTEMBER 17, 2009  – FIVE DAYS AHEAD OF WASHINGTON POST: General Stanley McChrystal says America is already losing in Afghanistan, and the war will end in failure without more troops. President Obama says “We will test what resources we have against our strategy.” There are no troops available to send to Afghanistan until January 2010. General McChrystal warns  that he needs more troops and a new strategy or the allied mission will probably end in failure. He admits that the Taliban insurgents have made advances in the last year, and that unless the tide is turned back they may be unbeatable within 12 months. “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months)… risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” writes General McChrystal. The 66-page report was presented to Robert Gates, the US Defense Secretary, on August 30 and leaked in the Washington Post on September 21, 2009.

Dr. Taylor has appeared on major television and radio networks worldwide more than 1,200 times and has had more than 500 articles published in major newspapers internationally. He was the subject of a Washington Post Magazine cover story, as well as a Washington Times “Doers in Washington” feature. His 17 published books include American National Security, 5th ed. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) and American National Security: Policy and Process, 6th rev. ed. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

Interview Highlights!

On Afghanistan:

Afghanistan could become another Vietnam. There is enormous debate growing in academia. I don’t think you can paint liberals versus conservatives in this debate.

We have a still classified report coming from the military commander in Afghanistan. I think it’s going to say that we must stay the course. I will give you all the reasons why we should stay the course, but if you give me two minutes, I can also tell you all the reasons why it won’t work.

We’ve been there before in Iraq, where we were losing terribly. Then General Petraeus came in with a new counter insurgency strategy that worked – convincing Sunni leaders to work with us at the village and provincial levels.

But we didn’t do that in Iraq until the last year and a half. It’s what we must do in Afghanistan, but we haven’t had enough time.

On South Korea:

Using our soldiers on the ground in South Korea, we can kill and destroy their military forces. But in the process, our allies in Japan and South Korea – and all the American civilians on the ground – would take hundreds of thousands of casualties. In a few hours, North Korea could obliterate the capitol of South Korea, incinerating over 25 million people overnight.

We would win, but we would take so many casualties that it would be a pyhrric victory. So we have to find another way to get North Korea out of the nuclear business – through quiet diplomacy.

Were the two journalists captured by North Korea part of a secret plan to restart diplomatic talks? We’ll know soon enough…

- Dr. William Taylor

Listen to Part One (Afghanistan – 15 minutes). Click the play button below.

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Listen to Part Two (North Korea – 10 minutes). Click the play button below.

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