WWII was the last war we won decisively. We thoroughly crushed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Yet since that war we have not fought total war style. We were mostly retrained by the Soviet Union’s nuclear umbrella but that ended in 1989. In 1991, we totally destroyed the Iraqi Army, but Saddam survived to fight another day. Then 9/11 happened and instead leveling the Middle East as we did Germany and Japan, Bush decided to engage in Progressive nation building projects that would make Woodrow Wilson and LBJ proud. Make no mistake, militarily, our armed forced carried out their missions flawlessly. But our Progressive establishment has a soft spot for Islam and we fought them with velvet gloves when we should have hit them with an Iron Fist!
Victor Davis Hanson feels we have the capability to win wars decisively. The problem is that the Progressive/Globalist disease our elites have prevents us from doing so. He also thinks that we have gown too complacent and and merciful, rather than the ruthless nature we had during WWII.
Given that the United States fields the costliest, most sophisticated, and most lethal military in the history of civilization, that should be a silly question. We have enough conventional and nuclear power to crush any of our enemies many times over. Why then did we seem to bog down in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? The question is important since recently we do not seem able to translate tactical victories into long-term strategic resolutions. Why is that? What follows are some possible answers.
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But in the last twenty years there is an even greater restraint to operations—a moral, if not smug, self-restraint that has turned fighting from a quest for victory into a matter of jurisprudence in which how we fight a war is more important than what we actually achieve. The old Neanderthal formula — we will level your cities, defeat and humiliate your military, impose our system of government upon you, and then give you our aid and friendship as you reinvent yourself as a free-market capitalist democracy — certainly worked with Germany, Japan, and Italy.
But does anyone believe that we could have bombed Saddam as we did those in Hamburg? The country that tore itself apart over waterboarding three confessed terrorists who had an indirect hand in the murder of 3,000 Americans seems ill-equipped to inflict the sort of damage on enemies that in the past made them accept both defeat and redemption. War is now a matter of legality, or nation-building before, not after, the enemy is fully defeated, and that means, given the unchanging nature of man, that it is very difficult to win a war as in the past. Note, in this context, Obama’s drone campaign, which he expanded seven- or eight-fold upon inheriting it from Bush. Is it not the perfect liberal way of war? There is no media hand-wringing over collateral damage; no burned faces, charred limbs, headless torsos on the evening news; no U.S. losses; no prisoners at Guantanamo. There is only a postmodern murderous video game and a brief administration chest-thump that “we’ve take out 20 of the top 30 al-Qaeda operatives.”
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We are forgetting yet another wild card: since World War II, all our serial fighting in Asia, Central America, the Pacific, and Africa has involved optional wars—fighting that did not question the very existence of the U.S. Other than a few stand-offs with the Cold War Soviets at places like Berlin or Cuba, the United States had not faced an existential threat since the end of World War II. September 11 might have posted such a challenge, since had bin Laden or his epigones been able to repeat the initial attacks, then air travel as we know it would have ceased, along with the idea of an open, modern commercial economy.
But other than the efforts to go after al-Qaeda, most of our fighting has been optional—whether in Somalia or Libya—and that makes it hard to galvanize the American public. (Which also explains why administrations try to hype WMD, or Saddam, or al-Qaeda, or Gaddafi, or the monstrous Assad in order to turn these peripheral threats into existential enemies.) In optional wars, the public can disconnect, as fighting can be conducted without disruption of the civilian economy. Victory or defeat does not immediately either please or endanger the public at home. And the result is that our leaders do not necessarily wage these wars all out, with the prime directive of winning them. (Note how the monster-in-rehab Gaddafi, whose children were buying off Western academics and putting on art shows in London, by 2011 was back in our imaginations to the 1986 troll, and how the Assads of Vogue magazine are once again venomous killers.)
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With all this in mind, consider Bashar al-Assad. There is a growing movement in the press and Congress to go into Syria—either by arming the rebels, training them, or providing them air cover. But while we know that we have the power to do so (or rather can borrow the money from the Chinese to do so), do we have a strategic aim? What should Syria look like after the war (a constitutional state that would not support Iran, fund Hezbollah, undermine Lebanon, start a war with Israel, or build another reactor)?
Are U.S. arms and influence without ground troops able to see those laudable aims realized, or would a post-Assad Syria end up like Libya or Egypt—and would that still be better or worse than the present-day Syria, for us, for Christians and other minorities, for Israel, etc.?
The usual gang of Wilsonian Tranzi Progressives like McCain, Ms. Lindsey, Bush, Clinton and Lieberman are drooling to go after Assad. Once again The US military will be used to remove a secular dictator and put in place an Sharia Muslim Brotherhood Regime. I am no pacifist or isolationist but I am tired of our armed forces being used as enablers of the Islamic agenda under the guise of nation building.
One of the reasons the US has not won a war decisively is because we fight wars wrong and for the wrong causes. If China threatened the Philippines, I would be totally in favor of using the military to make China back off. That nation was an American protectorate for 50 years and fought with us in WWII. They are a western nation and in our sphere of influence. I do not, however, support using the American military to nation build in the Islamic world nor to help the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mitt Romney would be wise to back off his calls for intervention in Syria. The majority of Americans oppose it and should he become President, he should focus on rebuilding our economy and getting our fiscal house in order. The US military should be used only to protect our interest and crush our enemies. If Romney gets us involved in Syria, many Conservatives will turn on him and he will be a one term President. Hopefully he ignores people like McCain, Ms. Lindsey, Bush and Lieberman and focuses just on bringing back prosperity to America.
Victor Davis Hanson is a true intellect and historian. Its a shame he gets our Geo-strategic situation better than out naive and corrupt Islamic loving elites.
(Hat Tip: Iron Fist)
