"A place where empires go to die." Mike Malloy said this about Afghanistan, and there are plenty of examples to make his point. The British Empire, at its height in the late 19th century, suffered a genuinely smashing debacle of a defeat at the Khyber Pass, and could never really come to grips with the country. The Russians in the late 20th century made fools of themselves. They tried to overawe and outgun the natives only to be repeatedly humiliated and sent packing. Learning nothing from the failure of these enormous superpowers, the United States in the early 21st century found itself in the same jagged mountains and dusty countryside. Going on 20 years of fighting, thousands of U.S. personnel have died, countless injured or forever altered, and trillions in treasure has been spent. The cost to the native peoples can never be fully tabulated. All this has created what Gen. Petraeus termed a "Generational struggle." And it's not our first go around this particular dance floor. Not even close.
I can't think of a place more different in appearance from Afghanistan than Vietnam. But the thickly jungled South East Asian country has just as much claim to be the graveyard of empires as anywhere else. The Mongols, perhaps the greatest conquerors of all time, had a rough go in Vietnam. Various Chinese dynasties have made plays at controlling their southern neighbor, with varying degrees of success. Still, ultimately they could never conquer the country. Then the French tried to stake a claim, but at Dien Bein Phu, it became abundantly clear that continued colonial rule wasn't going to happen. As late as the 1980s, the Red Chinese government made a play, sending tanks and armor over their shared border. Again the Vietnamese sent them packing. And of course, there was the whole 20-year quagmire known in the West as the Vietnam War. A futile fight to pen in the spread of communism, the Vietnam War saw the United States go from humiliation to humiliation, even though it was one of two Super Powers at the time, and Vietnam was a far weaker opponent on paper. The key phrase there is on paper. By the wars end over 50k us soldiers had died, maybe as many as a million Vietnamese dead, and those numbers are up for debate and still changing. The war also broke the country's trust in its generals and military leaders. Ike, with all his integrity, led the people to believe generals would not lie or plot or cheat. Then Vietnam came and the false hope and out and out lies of progress, footholds, victory close by, an end in sight, flooded from the top brass to the rightfully skeptical press. Even more damning was, for the first time, the public got to peek into the mad, mad world of fighting an angry, insurgent riddled native population on their nightly news. It's out of these dark, steamy, damp Vietnamese jungles comes the insane line, "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,'.
The chaos inherent in that thinking, though, is by no means unique to Vietnam or the latter half of the 20th century. There is another place where empires have gone to die and where military minds were at a loss for how to win. In this place, a decade's long struggle would kill and maim thousands, produce 88 medals of honor worthy tales, and see five future army chiefs of staff. Many of the famous names from WWI and WWII saw some time in this forgotten war, even though a quick google search today produces only a handful of books to be had on the conflict. Compare that to 10k and more for both the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan. This hellish place generated the same kind of deadly madness as the others as well. One U.S. official prophesied the paradoxical reasoning of the Vietnam era quote about destroying the village, saying of his punitive and brutal pacification methods "While these methods may appear harsh, it is the kindest thing to do."
This time on Cauldron, let's go back to the island of Jolo in the Southern Philipines. Let's go back to the humid, sticky air of March 1906. To a mountain that sat among the clouds. A volcanic rock with cliffs so sheer a man had to crawl to climb. Let's go back to the crater where hundreds of native Moros, men, women, and children awaited their deaths. To the crater crest where Krag carrying modern U.S. infantrymen prepared to punish the desperate sword-wielding natives with terminal violence. Let's go back to March 5-8 1906 and the battle of Bud Dajo.
Main Source
- Honor For The Flag - The Battle of Bud Dojo 1906 and the Moro Massacre - Robert A Fulton
- America's First "Endless War" Was Fought in the Philippines - Danny Sjursen
Music
Overcome by Ugonna Onyekwe
Art
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