Why Dont We Win Wars Anymore? by Bill Stack How can a nation, our nation, with more military spending than the next 10 highest military-spending nations combined, not win wars anymore? In short, because our policy makers have been working very hard to not win them. It used to be, that if you won most or all of the battles, you won the war. Lately, not so much. So, what gives? It begins, I believe, with a philosophy that says war is bad or immoral, held by policy makers, that causes them to refuse to even say the word war, and consequently causes them to refuse to think in terms of victory or defeat. The last goal mentioned by the President relating to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, was to bring them to a responsible end. In Iraq, this meant pulling out all troops, and abandoning the peace achieved, and the gains made by American blood sweat and treasure. It remains to be seen what responsible end means to this administration for Afghanistan. With ISIS, the President recently expressed a desire to make the problem manageable. American service members are trained to win wars, but then forbidden by policy makers from doing so. High-minded people, disgusted by the concept of war, apparently think that by pretending war doesnt exist, it will go away. Actually the reverse is true. As somebody famous (General Douglas MacArthur) once said, There is no substitute for victory. After achieving complete victory, and what would become 70-yrs of peace with defeated foes, the General wrote the following to congress, as war in Korea was heating up. His advice was ignored, and still is: Letter to Representative Joseph W. Martin, Jr., (20 March 1951); read to the House by Martin on April 5. It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war. We havent decisively won a war since. But we have fought endless campaigns, and are now going back to Iraq a third time, because conclusive victory was not allowed to be sought the first time. Attached to this post are 2 pictures. One is General Douglas MacArthur, who helped us achieve complete victory in WWII, and warned Congress about accepting anything less in the future. The other picture is SPC Brian Simmons. Brian served as the loader on D-11 (M1 Abrams tank), during the first Gulf War, 1991. This picture was taken as we were at a checkpoint in Iraq in 1991, after the 100 Hrs War was supposedly over. How many times will young Americans have to return to this location, to fight in something-other-than-war, that those that send them do not let them decisively win, and bring a lasting peace? Better to call war what it is, allow the troops to win it decisively, and then preserve and enjoy the peace, than to continuously involve multiple generations of the youth of America in endless armed conflicts they are never allowed to win, because of the queasiness or ineptitude of American politicians that refuse to even acknowledge when we are at war.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 10:49:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015