Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions

by Ed Strosser

  RECOVERING THE STINGER MISSILES

  After the Soviets took off, the CIA realized that it might not be pru­dent to leave thousands of these deadly missiles in the hands of Islamic terrorists. Congress secretly authorized millions of dollars to buy back Stingers. The CIA, falling back on its old ways, out­sourced the process to Pakistan’s ISI, who scoured the back roads of Afghanistan looking for anyone with a missile stashed under his bed. The CIA paid between $80,000 to $150,000 per missile, with ISI taking a commission that would make a loan shark blush. In some years the United States spent as much buying missiles as it spent on humanitarian aid in the country. And where did all the money go? To the mujahideen and their new legions who used it to buy more weapons. Despite the recall, the CIA failed to round up all the Stingers. A few made their way to a foreign country where they were dissected, copied, and eventually produced locally. That coun­try: Iran.

  Back at the Kremlin, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gor­bachev was doing his best to destroy the empire from within. He knew the country had to undertake dramatic economic reform in order to stay alive and compete with the West. At the same time, Gorby allowed more openness in the country, including more liberalization of the press. As a result, every­one knew the catastrophe that was taking place to the Rus­sian army, but the hard-liners refused to surrender to reality. For Gorby it was not a question of if they would withdraw but when and how, without sparking a coup against himself.

  By the end of 1986 the war had blossomed into a gro­tesque Disneyesque spectacle of U.S.-sponsored terrorist training. The border along Pakistan was swimming in money from the American sugardaddy as volunteers from around the Arab world all tried to muscle in on the Russian slaugh­ter. And Osama bin Laden had taken up permanent residence in Peshawar, the center of the Afghan war effort in Pakistan. Alarm bells failed to ring at the CIA. In fact, they welcomed the new additions to the mujahideen. Guns for everyone.

  Looking to get closer to the action, bin Laden moved his operation into Afghanistan. In April 1987 the Soviets at­tacked his hideout in the mountains just inside the border. His soldiers held on bravely, and bin Laden sustained a slight foot injury. After a few days he and the survivors withdrew to Pakistan. Several journalists chronicled the fight, and bin Laden succeeded in turning this small battle into a public re­lations bonanza. He toured the Arab world with exploits of his fighters’ bravery and quickly became the face of the Is­lamic jihad against invaders, Soviet or otherwise. Young men willing to die for him flocked to his banner. Massoud fought on in anonymity.

  Later in 1987, Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevard­nadze secretly told U.S. secretary of state George Shultz they wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan. Shevardnadze asked for U.S. help, however, as they believed the Islamists were becoming too strong and posed a threat to the Soviet control of their Islamic republics. In exchange for a quick exit, they asked the United States to stop supporting the rebels. Here was a golden moment: the Americans had a chance for a double victory. They would get more than they ever dreamed out of Afghanistan, not just a Soviet bloody nose but also an outright defeat. And, they would get the cooperation of the Soviets in controlling the rise of the Islamic fundamentalists. The kind of help that would possibly cut the threat off before it became serious. The Americans, however, doubted the sin­cerity of the Soviets. They were blind to any other threats and rejected the Soviet offer, holding on to their knee-jerk view of the world. So entrenched was this knee-jerk thinking that Robert Gates, who took over the CIA after Casey’s 1986 death, bet $25 that the Soviets would not withdraw from Afghanistan within a year.

  In 1988 Gorby proved Gates wrong. Rather than agree to cut support for the rebels once the Soviets left, the United States sped up arms deliveries. In Moscow the new policy of glasnost, or openness, allowed longtime dissident Andrei Sakharov to publicly denounce the Afghan war as a criminal adventure. Gorby’s cool draft of honesty had turned into a cyclone of white heat. Other parts of the Soviet Empire took note.

  Once the Russians started pulling out, the issue became who would run postwar Afghanistan. The CIA predicted the Soviet-backed leader Najibullah would quickly collapse. To prepare for this they did nothing. Even after Zia died in August 1988, the CIA continued to support his pro-Islamic policies while the Islamic radicals stood poised to snatch power in Afghanistan.

  October 1988 saw a leading CIA officer from Afghani­stan, Ed McWilliams, deliver his critique to Washington. The report stated that all the money the United States had spent had been hijacked by the Pakistani ISI and used to create a powerful Islamic fundamentalist movement ready to seize Afghanistan and turn it into an anti-American Islamic state. The CIA leaders, angered at his conclusions, recalled McWilliams and tried to sabotage his career.

  Soviet troops continued to roll north out of Afghanistan throughout that year. By February 1989 only a handful re­mained. On February 15, the final vehicles stopped on the Termez Bridge, and Gen. Boris Gromov, commander of the Fortieth Army, left his tank and walked to the Soviet Union into the arms of his son while the international media watched. What began secretly in the dark rooms of the Kremlin died in the open, a stunning display of the changes Gorby’s cyclone had wrought. The trusted playbook had been torn up, the Brezhnev Doctrine shredded, and those living under the thumb of the Soviet army everywhere no longer feared the tanks.

  Once the Soviets left, the Americans followed, quickly losing interest in the venture without the fun of killing Rus­sians. They abandoned Massoud and the other rebels, and mentally blackholed the entire area. After dominating the CIA’s thinking for years, once the Soviets pulled out the United States left the whole situation for Pakistan to deal with. Najibullah hung on for three years without his Soviet backers.

  By the end of 1989, the Russians soon realized they had lost more than Afghanistan. Throughout Eastern Europe, people who had lived in fear of Soviet tanks stood astride the Berlin Wall, whacking it with sledgehammers. The invincible Red Army and the Soviet empire died in the snowy moun­tains of Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union slipped under the waves two years later. Meanwhile, champagne flowed at CIA headquarters, its leaders too drunk on success to understand the danger of the mujahideen factory they had built. Massoud planned his attacks on Kabul. Bin Laden trained his troops at American-built bases and honed his recruitment videotapes. The final struggle of the Cold War was over.

  Two superpowers fought. The Russians knew they had lost. The Americans thought they had won.

  WHAT HAPPENED AFTER

  In 1986 William Casey suffered a brain seizure and died. Robert Gates claimed Casey’s final words were argh… argh… argh. Two years later Zia, still firmly in control of Pakistan and now one of the most important allies of the United States, died when his private plane crashed, also killing the head of Pakistan intelligence and the U.S. am­bassador to Pakistan. While initially foul play was sus­pected, it was later shown to be an accident.

  The Lion survived the war and became a major figure in postwar Afghanistan. Massoud held on as one of the most powerful leaders, and when the Taliban began their sweep through the country in 1994, he retreated to the north where he became the military commander of the Northern Alliance and the sole effective fighter against the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies. Then, during an early weekend in September 2001 he entertained some journalists who turned out to be assassins sent by Osama bin Laden. Their bomb ripped through Massoud. He survived long enough to die on a heli­copter taking him to a hospital in nearby Tajikistan. Two days later bin Laden’s minions turned their wrath on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

  FOURTEEN.

  THE FALKLAND ISLANDS WAR: 1982

  War at its most basic. No grand principles at play, the great driving force behind twentieth-century wars. Instead, this war was about nationalistic macho: who had more of it and who was going to get pushed around. In an age of aircraft carriers, super­sonic jets, and high-tech missiles, it was as meaningless as a schoolyard fight.

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p; Sometimes when one country’s nationalism rubs up against another country’s, conflict breaks out. Historically, few countries have been as vigorous defending their nation­alism as Great Britain. Sneeze wrong on one of its outposts and you can expect a nasty letter from the Queen. When the Argentines grabbed the useless islands in 1982, the British didn’t hesitate to sail a big chunk of their navy to the other end of the world to take back the Falklands. The world was shocked, none more than the leaders of the invading Argen­tine junta, because their citizens were among the few people who knew where the Falklands were and among the even fewer number who cared. At the height of the Cold War, the world was treated to the sad spectacle of a shooting contest between two countries that really had nothing to fight about. And oddly, there was not a Communist anywhere in sight.

  THE PLAYERS

  Margaret Thatcher — ¿Quién es mas macho? Nobody beats Maggie. The first woman to head Britain’s formerly world-dominating govern­ment, the “Iron Lady” was appalled over the spectacularly mistimed Argentine aggression and pushed for the massive military operation to retake the Falklands, despite often being able to communicate with the islands only by relayed ham-radio messages.

  Skinny — Spoiled for a fight with the Russians but had to settle for the Argentines.

  Props — Pushed the rusty British fleet to its breaking point and beyond.

  Pros — Revived British economy and its standing in the world.

  Cons — Never confused with Minister Congeniality. Not even third runner-up.

  Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri — The ruling head of the Argentine military junta in 1982. Чe took over in December 1981 when a reshuffling put him in the corner office where he shared the reins on decision making for the country’s economic and social policies, as well as who was to be tortured, killed, and made to disappear.

  Skinny — While never subjecting the junta to the rude dictates of the electorate, he was nevertheless sensitive to pressure from the public to shore up his poll numbers.

  Props — Well liked in Washington where the Reagan administration admired him for his willingness to kill thousands of people on the off chance that some of them may turn out to be Communists.

  Pros — Head of the catchily named “National Reorganization Pro­cess” as a front for the dirty-war crackdown on the ungrateful popu­lace. Also looked impressive in his uniform while being cheered in front of the palace by huge crowds who imagined they were going to defeat the British.

  Cons — Failed to inspire a Broadway show about his life.

  THE GENERAL SITUATION

  The Falkland Islands lie just outside the Antarctic Circle. The islands are barren, and their most numerous inhabitants are birds and seals. A small number of people, amounting to no more than a village or two, have inhabited the islands for hundreds of years since people first put down roots into its thin soil.

  The primary aspect of the Falkland Islands has been their complete insignificance in every way. The islands have no practical use except as a whaling station, weather observa­tory (although dreary is what people usually observe), or naval coaling station, useful in the rare case your ships still use coal. When English sea captain James Cook discovered the islands, he declared them “not worth the discovery.” On the other hand, he did feel it was worthy to note that it was not worth discovering.

  Despite this persistent insignificance to humans, the Falk­land Islands have been the subject of power grabs through­out modern history. In the 1760s the French, British, and Spanish, all eagerly gobbling up colonies around the world, eyed the worthless islands as an easy addition to an empty quadrant of their colonial empire map. In 1764 the French set up a colony on the islands — followed a year later by the British — with both colonies ignorant of the other’s existence. When the French and British discovered each other’s heinous presence, the British demanded the French declare their alle­giance to King George III. The French spurned their offer and, sensing perhaps their only value existed as an object of desire to the British Empire, quickly sold their interest to Spain.

  As the Spanish colony grew, the British colony withered, and in 1770 the British retired, but not before the British for­eign office issued its standard diplomatic threat to start a war of honor with Spain. The Spanish agreed to a secret peace treaty that supposedly maintained Spanish sovereignty over the islands while allowing the British to keep their main colony at Port Egmont. This treaty, whose exact terms have never been made public, forms the main dispute over who exactly holds the deed on the insignificant islands.

  Despite having their colony restored, the British pulled up stakes in 1774 and continued with their empire building for the next sixty years. During this time the Spanish Empire continued to melt while the British Empire grew to ever-greater glory. Tellingly, the fortunes of both empires were apparently completely unrelated to their respective colonial position in the Falklands.

  The dissolution of the Spanish Empire left in its wake a host of new countries in South America, including Argentina, the closest country to the Falklands. The Argentines, a new nation eager to grab its own worthless possessions, declared the Falklands theirs and in 1820 landed a ship to plant their new flag. Soon, colonists established a fishing port, a logical use for the barren islands, but one that proved to be a fester­ing affront for unknown reasons to the maritime-minded English, who were inclined to claim any gathering of dirt protruding above the waves as their own.

  In 1833 a British warship swooped down to the Falklands, (known to the Argentines as the Malvinas), claimed them for Britain, and escorted the fisherman-provocateurs back to Ar­gentina. The ousting of the fishermen caused an uproar in Argentina. National honor had been insulted and they vowed revenge.

  One hundred fifty years later, the Argentines made their move.

  WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “DEFEND THE CRUMBS OF THE EMPIRE”

  In 1982 General Galtieri and his fellow juntos were success­fully waging the “dirty war” that killed something like 30,000 of their own citizens. Despite the seeming success of the dirty war, the junta felt that things were not going well for the country and that happiness was not widespread throughout the land.

  The reason was that although the country had undergone the junta’s “National Reorganization Process,” the economy was still a mess. This fact, combined with the gnawing suspi­cion that the junta had been responsible for the disappearance of thousands of citizens, had resulted in many unhappy Ar­gentines. In order to cheer them up, Galtieri and the juntos came up with the idea of reflagging the Falkland Islands, humbling the British overlords, and taking revenge for the ousted fishermen from 150 years ago. Maps of Argentina always showed the Malvinas as part of their country; many depicted them as supersized islands lying close to the Argen­tine shore. Since very few people had actually been there, no one was the wiser. To Galtieri, taking the Falklands would restore national pride and make the citizens forget about the staggering economy and the hordes of disappeared citizens.

  After a short period of careful study, the junta came up with a plan to make a quick invasion, declare victory, and reap the benefit of the public relations bonanza. Their little fantasy world failed to take into account the willingness of England’s leader — “Iron Lady” Thatcher — to fight to the death over insignificant crumbs of the former British Empire. Her autobiography contains a matchless bit of British under­statement, admitting that the Falklands were “an improbable cause for a twentieth-century war.” The junta gave the nod to a crack team of scrap-metal merchants to spark the invasion by landing on South Geor­gia Island on March 19, 1982. South Georgia Island is ad­ministered by the Falklands governor and lies a thousand miles east of the main Falkland Islands. Its only other claim to fame is that it had been the location of an abandoned whaling station inhabited by a British Antarctic survey team. The determined metal gleaners landed unopposed and bra­zenly planted the Argentine flag — without informing the British authorities — and then started to aggressively collect me
tal whaling scrap. The British governor of the Falklands, Rex Hunt, had the scientists confront the scrap harvesters and ask them to have their passports stamped with a British landing permit.

  Outraged over the proposed soiling of their passports, they refused, as it would acknowledge the despised British sovereignty. The British governor insisted that the flag be lowered. The Argentines agreed and lowered the flag but still refused to get their landing permits.

  In response to the South Georgia invasion, a Royal Navy ice patrol boat, the HMS Endurance, was sent with twenty-two heavily armed Royal Marines on board to remove the incursive scrap seekers. The juntos then told the gullible Brit­ish that the scrap-metal men had left, so the Endurance turned around. But the next day the British scientists on South Georgia radioed Hunt saying the Argentines were still there. The Endurance made a quick U-turn and stood ready off South Georgia as Thatcher’s government told Galtieri to remove his men from the island. Both sides girded for a big confrontation over the tiny island off the small islands.

  Galtieri refused to dial down the macho. No self-respect­ing member of the junta, having successfully dominated mil­lions of unarmed Argentines, would take orders from the British. The scrap-metal men stayed. The Royal Marines landed and confronted the Argentines. To the juntos this scene was a repeat of the humiliation they suffered in 1833, almost nine short generations ago.