Dardanelles Then, Afghanistan Now: Apples and Oranges
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Professor Andrew J. Bacevich considered the war in Afghanistan against Churchill’s experience in World War I. Churchill, he says, looked for alternatives to “sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders.” Just so. And we should be looking for alternatives to chewing dust in Afghanistan.
Bacevich describes Churchill’s alternative as “an amphibious assault against the Dardanelles.” (That is a physical impossibility.) Churchill championed a naval attack on the Dardanelles, followed by an amphibious assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula). Bacevich adds that Churchill wished to “support the infantry with tanks.”…
