Chuck Hagel: Iraq and Afghanistan aren't ours to win or lose

Chuck Hagel wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post on Thursday discussing the United States foreign policy and their interventionist policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the globe. ‘It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out,’ says Hagel and mentions that the war in Viet Nam lasted 10 years, while the operations in Afghanistan will be in its ninth year and the occupied forces in Iraq will soon enter its seventh year. The former Republican Senator acknowledged that the September 11 commission outlined the failure of intelligence rather than military force, ‘The U.S. response, engaging in two wars, was a 20th-century reaction to 21st-century realities. These wars have cost more than 5,100 American lives; more than 35,000 have been wounded; a trillion dollars has been spent, with billions more departing our Treasury each month. We forgot all the lessons of Vietnam and the preceding history.’ The former Chairman of the Atlantic Council of the United States believes the foreign policy mandate of the US should be diplomacy first without appeasement towards the enemy, ‘We need a clearly defined strategy that accounts for the interconnectedness and the shared interests of all nations.’ Indeed, the US, according to Hagel, can help the two nations develop as a country itself but their fates are in their own hands because of the cultural differences that each participating nation shares. Hardly discussed in Washington in recent memory is the presence of large US forces, ‘Bogging down large armies in historically complex, dangerous areas ends in disaster. In Vietnam, we kept feeding more men, material and money into a corrupt Vietnamese government as our own leaders continued to deceive themselves and the American people.’ Global partnerships and collaboration on issues such as Iran and North Korea are needed and no one nation can conclude a troubling scenario, which is why, states Hagel, dealing with the situation and tensions in Iran cannot be done alone by the US but also with China or Russia. ‘There's a reason we are part of a Group of 20 rather than a G-8. Even the world's largest economies cannot handle today's problems alone.’ The Republican concludes with former Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson who knew that the war in Viet Nam was lost but did not want to be the first American President to lose a war. Pres. Obama, Hagel warns, may be in the same predicament, ‘Difficult decisions with historic consequences are coming soon for President Obama.’