“The soldier, above all others, prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
– Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Most who have served will agree. War should always be a last, not first resort. But, once all reasonable avenues are exhausted, you must fight to win; if you don’t, freedom and democracy are forfeit. The only rule that matters in war is to win and win as quickly as possible to minimize casualties. We seem to have lost that understanding.
During the American-led Persian Gulf War in 1991, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf introduced America to the phrase in this column’s title in one of his famous daily briefings, signaling a return to overwhelming force and destruction designed to shorten wars. Except for this brief burble of sanity, America’s long-term doctrine has featured minimal use of force and a focus on reducing civilian casualties at the expense of war objectives. Playing defense has been a total failure in practice, has cost hundreds of American lives and has seen us lose all our recent wars while not losing a single battle. We’ve messaged our population that America is a bully that always fails through ineptness and hopeless strategies. That, my friends, is how the TikTok generation views us.
We learn lessons in several ways; among the most instructive and long-lasting is by simple observation. Observation is superior to what we learn by deduction or inference. Therefore, regardless of how strong we are told our military is, we hear and observe messaging about its weaknesses and failures that become cemented in our brains. When our leaders suggest using the military to solve problems, many are predisposed to believe the worst motives and intentions. That is how we breed our internal dissidents; they ascribe the worst possible outcomes and motives to our country. We have created a culture of failure over several decades. Our actions reinforce those beliefs because we seemingly can’t win wars outright that go on endlessly, and worse, we elevate our enemies, using their propaganda as fact (casualty figures, as reported by Hamas, as an example).
While the American public thinks wars are passe, our enemies get a vote – and they disagree. What they have learned, thanks to our country taking a Master’s level course in how to lose the support of our citizens, is that while the enemy can’t match American weapons and tactics, America can be weakened from within and forced to fight endless wars, or surrender. It’s another feedback loop, especially when Americans believe we don’t wage just wars. Let me give you an example:
After Israel was savagely attacked last October, Israel went after Hamas in Gaza. It was the only logical strategy for Israel to pursue. The Biden administration immediately became Hamas’ cheerleader, urging at first and then demanding later … restraint. Can anyone think of a clearer case for retaliation than October 7th? American generals were all over the Sunday morning shows saying, “Urban warfare is undoable,” based on U.S. experience, and urged Israel to find another way.
Israel has lost about 340 soldiers in Gaza and killed approximately 17,000 Hamas combatants, according to British sources. Has Israel succeeded or failed, as many Western media scream in their headlines? According to Tablet, Israel is succeeding despite the bad press, noting, “Western analysts think otherwise because they see Israel’s war through the lens of America’s own failed counterinsurgency doctrines.” Biden has likely been responsible for a much-prolonged war in Gaza, as the administration has intentionally slowed down the fighting by threatening Israel’s special relationship with the U.S. It has led to where we are today: an unnecessary mess and with Hamas feeling empowered to reject any deal because Joe’s got their back. Biden is likely responsible for 10,000 excess Gazan deaths that would not have been, due to his progressive base running U.S. foreign policy.
America faces multiple threats that do not and won’t respond to diplomacy. When diplomacy fails, there are still a couple of options left before you have to go to war. It used to go without saying that we needed to be the strongest Mother F—er on the face of the earth. Now, not so much. With voters’ views framed by what they have observed over their lifetimes and the fact that electricity still comes out of the walls on demand, they have food in their stomachs, and nobody messes with their online life, why sweat it? They deny the reality it could all come to a screeching halt overnight. When it does, it will be too late to put that particular genie back in the bottle. That’s the problem. Not enough of us think our way of life, even staying alive, is under threat. How dumb can people be?
The alternative is surrender, and there are all kinds of surrender. Don’t think Chinese or BRICS soldiers on our streets. Instead, think of diminished trade, an inflated currency that won’t buy yesterday’s American lifestyle, or decisions by the World Economic Forum handed down to our president to follow. Think of isolation and freedoms restrained by new treaties we are forced to agree to by victors far away. A world featuring a weak America is no longer hard to imagine; there are so many ways to curtail our future options.
Elections matter. America assembled over a half million war-fighters in the first Persian Gulf war, which we could not repeat today. America’s combat readiness, especially on the ground, has been hollowed out, leaving us where we are today with third-rate powers restricting our freedom of movement with impunity and dictating terms to us. We dare not let the progressives, masquerading as traditional American power players, continue to run our country into the ground and cede our military dominance. It’s now or never for so many things. Don’t you agree?
God bless America.
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