Flynn's Harp: Herb Bridge, Memorial Day and Afghanistan

Herb Bridge, who fought in two wars and had a part in setting the stage for the first Gulf War before retiring as the nation’s highest-ranking reserve admiral, thinks nine Memorial Days of U.S. at war in Afghanistan is enough.

Bridge, longtime Seattle business leader as CEO then chairman of the Ben Bridge Jeweler, the West Coast chain of jewelry stores, says “we need to get the heck out of countries that don’t want us and have no significance to our survival, or indeed no impact on the world as a whole.”

I asked Bridge for his thoughts as the U.S. death toll in Afghanistan reached the 1,000 milestone last week and we prepare for Memorial Day next Monday to remember, or are at least we’re supposed to remember, those who died in service to the nation, nine Memorial Days on since the U.S. launched war there.

It took seven years to reach 500 deaths in Afghanistan, but the spike in military action there has taken the second 500 in less than two years. That doesn’t count the thousands more who have had their lives shattered by physical or psychological wounds, or both.

The conversation with Bridge was also prompted by a series of exchanges on an e-mail train on which one-time colleagues in the former global wire service United Press International gather to share thoughts. Soldiers’ deaths and Memorial Day occupied e-mails on the train a couple of days ago.

Gary Haynes, a retired photographer who spent much of his career with UPI, offered this: “Both Iraq and Afghanistan have become, for Americans with no kids in the fight, some sort of abstraction.

“We have no draft. There is no ‘war tax’ to remind us of the cost associated with two wars,” he said. “Reinstate the draft, and the war would be wound down quickly. Make sure to include all the draft-age kids of our Senators and Congressmen, and the war would get top level attention.”

When I sent that to Bridge, he e-mailed back: “In my Navy Times, received today, are the pictures labeled the Human Toll, close to 500 of the men and women (491 to be exact) who have lost their lives (in the past two years) of the damned war that seems to have no conclusion in sight.”

“Yes, maybe if (members of Congress) had a personal stake, like their offspring being over there, they might come up with innovative and constructive means of getting the heck out,” he said.

Bridge, a vibrant and active octogenarian, known for his love of motorcycling and outings with the group of CEO cyclists known as Hell’s Rotarians, wears his Democratic party loyalty as visibly as his military honors but is unhesitatingly critical of continued Afghan involvement.

Susan B. DeLong, A retired UPIer now living with her husband in Australia, recalled visiting Normandy and the cemetery of another war.

“My walk through the cemetery was one of the most humbling experiences of my

life.,” she e-mailed. “As I walked past the gravestones, I noticed the ages, row after row of 18-19-20-year-olds. I started to tear-up and noticed I was not alone.”

When I shared that with Bridge, he offered his thought that the death of each young man in earlier wars left grieving families “but generally didn’t leave dependents. Now, with many of those killed being older, they leave not merely the pain of loss but families bereft of their sole support.”

Recalling his own military career, Bridge said he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1942 at the age of 17, was selected off his ship to go to officer candidate school and returned as an officer before the war ended.

Married and with a baby, he was called up at the outbreak of the Korean War and served as a carrier officer for the duration.

His final command was in 1982 when he was asked as a reserve admiral to take over active command of a fleet of 45 logistics ships for a few months while the eventual commander underwent final preparation back in the states.

It was during that command that he helped set the stage for U.S. response in the first Gulf War by landing 1,000 marines quickly in a maneuver that he said eased Saudi and Arab concerns about the U.S. ability to muster rapid response in any war with Iraq, “which was exactly how it was done when Kuwait was invaded.”

Contrasting his thoughts about continuing the Iraq involvement with his convictions about getting out of Afghanistan, Bridge said “I just feel the Iraqis have a nation. We took it apart when we launched that war and we have an obligation to finish the role of rebuilding it.”

With regard to Afghanistan, Bridge said: “There’s not really a nation there. We need to let them go fight among themselves and leave them alone.”

As Bridge talked about Afghanistan, I was reminded of a quote about the place from another former UPI colleague, one-time Vietnam correspondent Ray Herndon, that I included in another column last fall, a quote that bears inclusion here.

Herndon observed for that column, which was aimed at drawing parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan: “It was the first and only country that Alexander the Great couldn't conquer. And Imperial Britain, which easily gobbled up the combined territory of India and Pakistan next door, somehow couldn't defeat the much smaller Afghanistan. And it wasn't for lack of trying.”

He recalled the then-Soviet Union’s failed 10-year effort to occupy Afghanistan and added: “Why do we think that we can wage a successful counterinsurgency in Afghanistan using only one-tenth the number of troops we committed to Vietnam? Are we kidding ourselves?”