Why do we always get it wrong?

Forty plus years ago, in Vietnam, we saw how the best and the brightest could ignore history, ignore truths and facts and conduct one of our nation's most disastrous wars.

Ten years ago this month, we saw how lies, inept personnel and poor and corrupt execution destroyed any hope of success in Iraq. These decisions still plague us today.

Four years ago, back into 2009, we thought that the Obama administration was fighting "The Good War," when it decided to surge US troops and civilians in Afghanistan. Yet again, we ignored history, didn’t send the best personnel, engaged in bureaucratic infighting and thought money could buy our way out. It did not.

Why do we keep making these same mistakes? Is it that the fault is not in stars, but in ourselves? These are some of the issues examined by esteemed and award winning journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran in his book Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan.


My conversation with Rajiv Chandrasekaran:

Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad

The war within the war for Afghanistan

There is an old saying that goes, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." When we look at US foreign and military policy since Vietnam, it's shame on us. Buy why? In Vietnam, the best and the brightest lead us into disaster. In Iraq, the mistakes of the last administration cost us dearly in lives and treasure. In the early days of the Obama administration, the decision to surge troops into Afghanistan was equally ill timed, ill conceived and once again showed how intelligent people and politics, even when linked with good intentions, can lead us into a disasters situation.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, senior correspondent and Associate Editor of the Washington Post, brilliantly showed us how this happened in Iraq, in his award winning Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Now, in his new work Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, he takes us deep inside the military and civilian decisions and actions that negatively impacted our Afghan policy.

My conversation with Rajiv Chandrasekaran:

Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad