Why We Lost Quotes

“O gods, from the venom of the cobra, the teeth of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan—deliver us. —TRADITIONAL HINDU PRAYER”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“What of the election? In that, Hamid Karzai had to be pretty happy. The hundred or so voters in Barg-e Matal on August 20 generated four thousand votes. Every one of them favored the serving Afghan president.”
― Daniel Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier. —RUDYARD KIPLING, “THE YOUNG BRITISH SOLDIER”
― Daniel Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“General George Patton wrote from long experience: “There are more tired division commanders than there are tired divisions. Tired officers are always pessimists.” The lieutenant was tired. His sergeants were not. They wanted to continue the mission.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“The U.S. troops joked that ISAF stood for “I Suck at Fighting,” “I Saw Americans Fighting,” or “I Sunbathe at FOBs [forward operating bases].”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“The last soldier killed, Specialist David E. Hickman of the Second Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, died in an IED strike in Baghdad on November 14, 2011.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“Realizing he wouldn’t get more soldiers, Schoomaker told his subordinates to squeeze more out of what they had. Each of ten regular Army divisions raised a fourth maneuver brigade, adding ten more deployable BCTs to the pool. Divisions shut down long-established but now extraneous headquarters: the division engineer brigade, the division artillery, the division support command, the MI battalion, and the signal battalion. All of their subordinate battalions and companies got divvied up and assigned to the new BCTs. Short-range air-defense battalions converted to cavalry squadrons—every BCT got one, yet another reflection of the critical importance of finding the enemy in this war. Along with the new cavalry squadrons, brigades cut to two infantry or armor battalions, giving up their old third-maneuver battalions to help create the new BCTs. Inside the heavy battalions, the ones with tanks and Bradleys, the model became two tank and two Bradley companies, plus an armored engineer company, a formidable array. The light battalions (airborne, air assault, and light infantry) also kept four companies: three rifle units and a weapons company. Cold War air defense, heavy artillery, chemical defense, and headquarters went away, cashed in to create the new BCTs.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thousands who had been deceived by their lying newspapers to believe that we were being whipped all the time now realize the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience. —MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“The U.S. collected information superbly and everywhere, from space to dirt. They tracked all kinds of events and things and people. For long-lead-time matters, like the order of battle for the Chinese fleet, that sufficed. For short-fuse needs, it got much, much more excruciating. Of the mass of data gathered, only a small percentage (50 percent? 10 percent? 5 percent?) ever got analyzed. Only a tiny fraction of that produced the specificity to allow action.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“follow the wise counsel of Khushal Khan Khattak , the great rebel leader who fought the invading Mughals in the seventeenth century:   When you fight a smaller enemy detachment you should decisively attack with surprise. But, if the enemy receives reinforcement [or] when you encounter a stronger enemy force, avoid decisive engagement and swiftly withdraw only to hit back where the enemy is vulnerable. By this you gain sustainability and the ability to fight a long war of attrition . . . A war of attrition eventually frustrates the enemy, no matter how strong he may be.   It matched almost exactly Mao Zedong’s more elegant formula:   Enemy advances, we retreat. Enemy halts, we harass. Enemy tires, we attack. Enemy retreats, we pursue.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“The MI folks could usually tell you the make, model, year, paint color, and license plate of the semitrailer truck that just ran over you.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“So there it stood. Al-Qaeda had been run off and disrupted, left badly disorganized, but not killed. The parts and franchises, the copycats and wannabes, took up where the Sheikh and company had left off. In December of 2001, we just didn’t have the manhunters, and, more to the point, the manhunters didn’t have the good scenters and able beaters to track down and tear apart a terrorist network, whether large or small, transnational or local. We could smash it—and we did—but we could not kill it, not yet.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“He sent in a conventional force, admittedly just a few men from the Tenth Mountain Division. It reminded all that there were never enough SOF. Airpower had killed effectively in Qala-i-Jangi. After all the hammering, though, people had to go in on the ground with rifles, grenades, and guts. To control dirt and the societies that lived on it, you had to use live, trained, disciplined humans, and more than a few.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“What did it mean to defeat the Taliban? The military definition of defeat is “an enemy force has temporarily or permanently lost the physical means or the will to fight. The defeated force’s commander is unwilling or unable to pursue his adopted course of action, thereby yielding to the friendly commander’s will, and can no longer interfere to a significant degree with the actions of friendly forces.” That suffices for doctrine. It would serve just fine should the Taliban play by the rules, surrender, go home, and stay there. But what if its members dispersed, scattered into the hinterlands, and crossed into Pakistan, their old sanctuary? What if the Taliban backed off for a while, regrouped, and returned?”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“What makes armed conflict even more subject to Murphy’s Law, and renders even simple acts so difficult, involves the danger of sudden death or serious injury. When you bet your life and those of others, fear, bravery, and strong emotions play huge roles. Killing is easy, but dealing with the act is not. Punches get pulled, hesitations occur, and though most are aggressive in the first contact, few stand up so willingly under fire the second time, or the twenty-second, let alone the hundred and second.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“In the armed forces, those who fight on the ground generally see those on ships as much better off. The Marines live in both worlds, and they have strong views. Major General Julian C. Smith put it well on the eve of the bloody 1943 Tarawa landing: “Even though you Navy officers do come in to about a thousand yards, I remind you that you have a little armor. I want you to know that Marines are crossing that beach with bayonets, and the only armor they will have is a khaki shirt.” As an admiral who had risen from the ranks once told an Army infantryman, the worst wardroom always trumps the best foxhole.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“one of the duties of the U.S. Navy, going all the way back to the early 1800s, the days of the Barbary pirates of North Africa, involves showing the flag. Safe passage of Navy ships ensures unmolested transit of merchant shipping, always the main conduit of all overseas trade whether in 1800 or 2000. Port calls projected U.S. influence ashore and kept markets open. Freedom of the seas, like all freedoms, must be exercised or it will atrophy.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“In 1944, B-17 bomber formations dropped 9,070 bombs in order to hit one German building. In 1967, F-105 jet fighter-bombers used 176 munitions to knock out a single North Vietnamese building. By 1991, a smart F-16 fighter-bomber could do the job with thirty bombs, or just one, if the bomb was smart too.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“The military could get by with fewer recruits because more in the ranks reenlisted. The quality of the volunteers turned out to be good, because the services insisted on drug-free high-school graduates with clean criminal records, criteria that ruled out 70 percent of American youth. (There is an unfortunate message in that statistic.) Smarter, tougher, and willing, volunteers trained and worked to their limits.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“Lawrence of Arabia, lionized in print and on film, lived with the tribal warriors and spoke their language. Schooled in history and archaeology, he found that the locals preferred raids and ambushes, short skirmishes, and quick hit-and-run escapades to Western maneuvers. They disdained uniforms, discipline, and stand-and-fight tactics. But they could make entire desert districts wholly untenable for conventional adversaries, demolishing rail lines, blowing out bridges, sniping, stealing, and slowly bleeding the big regiments to death. Lawrence called it “winning wars without battles.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“In the West, military intelligence (MI) analysts have long followed a simple premise: Assess enemy capabilities, not intentions.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“Master Sun put it simply: “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“We even found time, and nomenclature, for loosely related campaigns. One was the 2011 imbroglio in Libya known at the outset as Operation Odyssey Dawn, a good name for a Las Vegas pole dancer but a bit exotic for a military campaign.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“Specialist David E. Hickman of the Second Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, died in an IED strike in Baghdad on November 14, 2011.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“America’s innate uneasiness with death from above. It ill accords with the values of a democratic republic.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“Terrorizing you,” he proclaimed, “while you are carrying arms on our land, is a legitimate and morally demanded duty.”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“of”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“Afghanistan. Jarrah”
― Daniel P. Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“When blown, a MICLIC sympathetically detonated all the mines in the vicinity, scouring a swath eight yards wide out to the full range of a hundred yards.”
― Daniel Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

“The Taliban probably found it all amusing, as the ignorant occupiers essentially provided their foes’ death benefits.”
― Daniel Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars