[June 22, 2016] Army Vet reflects today on POLITICS and WINNING WARS.
I was sitting at my favorite bar the other evening discussing my favorite topic with a couple of halfwits who thought we fought the French and Canadians in World War II. The lack of historical knowledge of most Americans (our education system is stuck on stupid) is common knowledge but one thing stood out that many of you have yet to comprehend; America doesn’t win wars anymore. Heresy? Yep, but you can’t argue with the facts … America has not won a war since the stalemate in the Korea War ended with an armistice in 1953.
We could stretch the definition of “winning” to include the Cold War; and that war wasn’t a violent conflict with the old Soviet Union. Some of my old buddies down at the VFW argue that we won that one and yeah maybe we did and so I’ll agree for the sake of getting a nickel beer now and again. But if we look at wars where fighting actually took place and lives were lost, we won none of them. I nearly barfed my dinner when they brought up Grenada, Panama, the first Gulf War, and the Iraq War (part 2) and claimed them a victory for the United States.
Maybe you had to be there, on the ground fighting like me, to understand we didn’t win in the sense that we kicked butt and the enemy surrendered. We bombed a few buildings – maybe a lot of buildings – except we did our darndest to avoid killing anybody. Many of their soldiers died and some of ours but their physical infrastructure, their political bureaucracy, and their culture remained; not just fully intact but strengthened. None of them, including Lebanon, Somalia, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, would be considered allies today. If you think they are, then there’s nothing I can do when you take political propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower said that “The objective of the military-industrial complex since WWII has not necessarily been to win wars, but to engage in war for profit.” He believed this deep down in his gut and he might be right considering the outcome of our wars since 1945 and the money spent pursuing them. It would be easy to blame our political elite (lack of will) or its military-industrial complex (greed) for our failures. The core of the problem, infamously reflected in our current politician debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, is that the American culture is changing from a Christian-based, work-ethic centered society to one that is more focused on group identity and the rejection of tradition.
It should be self-evident for the peoples of any society that when a decision is made to go to war the endstate can never be anything other than destroying the enemy by bringing ruin to those tangible things they value; total destruction of its military and completely breaking the will of its people. Ralph Peters said it best when he said that the U.S. must “leave behind smoking ruins and crying widows …”1 and he’s right. If the goal is not to win then war should not be the tool by which to achieve what we desire politically.
Oh, and there’s that same bunch of panty-waist dunderheads at the end of the bar tonight who will argue with me that the Islamic terrorist attack on a gay club in Orlando the other day was the result of weak gun laws and blindly deny any linkage to Islam. They will be the very ones who call upon me and those like me when the decision to go to war is made. Sadly, I will be very successful but my fear is that America will lose the next war.
[Don’t forget to “Like” the Leader Maker at our Facebook Page.]
————————