Did you ever watch someone screw up and then try doing the same thing only to screw up yourself? It must be human nature for us to think we’re superior to that previous screw-up.
I’m thinking of Hitler. He knew all about Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia yet he went ahead and had his own disaster. The Russians are justly proud of their defense of their own nation, but their offense is not so great as can be seen these days on the news.
Russia also got into a different quagmire in Afghanistan back in the 1970s. They should have studied the history of Great Britain in Afghanistan in the previous century. Hadn’t they read the story of Dr. William Bryden, the sole survivor of the retreat from Kabul in 1842?
It was on this day that Dr. Bryden and his pony arrived at the East India Company compound in Jalalabad after a horrific six day 90 mile ride from Kabul during which 4,000 soldiers and 12,000 camp followers were picked off as they crossed the snow-clogged mountains of the Hindu Kush.
The army had gone to Kabul three years earlier to forestall the Russians from moving in. Britain saw the expansion of the Russian Empire as a threat to her interests in India. They sent the army to Kabul to create a buffer between India and Russia. Unfortunately the British backed the wrong man in Kabul and eventually all hell broke loose.
The British commander was sickly and hadn’t wanted the job in the first place. He agreed to pull his forces out of Kabul and thought he had an arrangement for safe passage to Jalalabad. As so often happens in Afghanistan, illusion did not align with reality. The tribesmen of the hills began picking off the British troops with their long-barrel rifles. A large proportion of those British troops were Indian mercenaries.
As the long column slowed down in the snow-filled passes, the tribesmen swooped in and slaughtered men, women, and children. It seems inconceivable that 16,500 soldiers and civilians could have been wiped out. Dr. Bryden at some point hopped on the pony of a dying British officer.
Bryden was attacked several times by tribesmen. During one attack part of his scalp was slashed off but he survived thanks to the magazine he had stuffed in his hat against the cold. The press called Bryden “the sole survivor” of the retreat, though other survivors straggled in later and 2,000 or so soldiers and civilians who had been captured were released in the following months
Dr. Bryden was a tough Scot and went back with the army to seek retribution from the Afghans. That amounted to killing some people and paying bribes to the tribesmen to keep the Russians out, then the British got out. The Russians did stay out. When Britain left India in 1947, Afghanistan became a client state of the Soviet Union.
When a revolution broke out in Afghanistan in 1978, Russia invaded Afghanistan to buck up their man. That went badly and it took the Soviets nine years to extricate themselves.
Civil war continued in Afghanistan until the Taliban took power in 1996. The Taliban’s big mistake was giving refuge to Osama bin Laden. Now it was America’s turn. It took us twenty years to get out and join Russia, Britain and several other empires in the Afghan Hall of Shame.
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| “We got blitzed.” |
Your description of Dr. Bryden's ride through snow-covered mountains of the Hindu Kush, and the 4000 soldiers and 12,000 others being picked off, one by one, reminded me of three terrible military incidents that could've been avoided: The Nightmare of The Chosin Reservoir in Korea in 1950 in which the Chinese overran American forces and annihilated thousands; where like MacArthur ignored reports of the build-up of Chinese troops in Korea along the Yalu River, Custer made a similar mistake along The Little Bighorn River. And General Mark Clark, Commander of the 5th Army did, at The Battle of The Rapido River in 1944, despite whose subordinates protested knowing the mission was doomed, "... sacrificed wastefully and uselessly soldiers," of the Fighting 36th."
ReplyDeleteAnd as you stated early in your post, "Did you ever watch someone screw up and then try doing the same thing only to screw up yourself?" It was known a frontal attack across the Rapido would end in disaster," as such assaults had failed on repeated occasions throughout history, he had added, "I am prepared for defeat."
William Goldman captured this historical pattern perfectly in his book, The Princess Bride , where Vizzini says, “You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is to never get involved in a land war in Asia.”
ReplyDeleteIt is also why the US has wisely refused to attack Canada.
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