Analysis Of Why We Lost, By Daniel Bolger

As the United States military, and the American public at large, struggle with the legacy and lessons of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) in Iraq, and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General (Retired) Daniel Bolger’s book, Why We Lost, adds an important element to the debate. An element that questions the advice to political leadership, the strategy, and the leadership of the country’s senior military officers. Bolger’s service as a general officer in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the senior levels of the U.S. Army staff, gives the reader a unique perspective on the inner workings of the conflicts. Bolger postulates senior military officers “demonstrated poor strategic and operational leadership” (xv). He supports this statement by masterfully weaving the questions of who’s the enemy, what’s the strategy, and …show more content…
In laying the blame for all that went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan at the feet of our senior military officers, he lets our political leadership and the other departments of the government mainly off the hook. While he discusses the drawbacks of counterinsurgency, saying the American military is not built for it and questioning the American public’s ability to stomach it, he fails to take successive Secretaries of Defense to task for their part in not asking the hard questions of their senior military advisors and of a lack of clear whole of government strategy in prosecuting the conflicts. He does not question the decisions, strategic guidance, or policy making timelines of both the Bush and Obama administrations. While this book adds to the scholarship on the conflicts since the attacks of September 11, 2001, it is not a complete history nor analysis of why the conflicts ended, in Bolger’s words, as “two lost campaigns and a war gone awry”