WAR IF YOU’RE IN IT, WIN IT
WAR—IF YOU’RE IN IT, WIN IT!!:
LOSING IT WOULD BE A CATASTROPHE
by
Ken Eliasberg
As I pointed out last week, we have not been fighting this war to win it; our effort has been more one of containment than one whose goal is victory. And here we run into the definitional problem raised by the not so loyal opposition who appear to be prepared to live with any negative result that would embarrass Bush. And that is, they inform us, at least by implication, that due to the diffused and dispersed state of the enemy VICTORY is just not possible. Baloney!! However, if they have their way, they may be right. What do I mean? Simply this—if you tie the military’s hands behind their back—by screaming disproportionate every time we kill a whole lot of people (particularly if they might be labeled, even disingenuously, innocent civilians)—then you are right. We can’t win. But if you’ll leave politics at the water’s edge, and just get the hell out of the way, I think we can produce not just victory, but take a giant step toward bringing a significant measure of stability to a region that has been anything but stable for centuries.
Am I optimistic that we shall do just that? Not at all. Our biggest problem is neither Radical Islam , difficult terrain we might have to traverse, or the hidden nature of our enemies. Our biggest problem is the radical anti-war left in this country, who seem determined to see us fail, and, in furtherance of that objective, have waged an unrelenting war of their own—against George Bush. They seem well suited to their real role—that of an advanced guard for Radical Islam. In other words, the real enemy—i.e. the one that ties our hands—is not Radical Islam; it is our very own radical left.
And they have been incredibly successful in frustrating any effort on the part of this country to win a war for over 60 years. What do I mean? We have not won a war since WWII, and, if we had round the clock cable T.V. then and an opposition party as disloyal as the current left-wing in this country, we would not have won that one (thank God Harry Truman was not listening to a bunch of academic airheads when he dropped the atomic bomb on Japan and brought them to their knees within one week of having done so—that is the way you fight a war; you destroy the enemy’s will to fight by scaring the living delights out of him. If you are not prepared to do that, then, by all means, follow the strategy offered up by the Dems—CUT AND
RUN (a euphemism for appeasement and surrender).
Let’s look at some of the arguments offered up by those in opposition. First, we are not fighting a clearly defined enemy, i.e. a sovereign nation with clearly defined geographical boundaries. This lack of clarity, prevents a clear terminal event, i.e. victory. To which I say B.S.!!! Yes it is new and different, but we have the capacity to hunt them down and kill them. This capacity has been watered down to the point where it is almost nonexistent. Why? Because of an excessive and inappropriate concern for collateral damage—the loss of innocent life. Unfortunately, that’s what war is—messy, brutal, imprecise and terminally violent. As Clemenceau noted during the WWI period, war is a series of catastrophes culminating in victory. In previous wars, when coverage was not so ubiquitous, we seemed comfortable with that approach. How do you deal with your enemy? Kill him! And, by the way, I’m not so sure that we are talking about innocent civilians here. And I’m not speaking here of the idiotic view espoused by Ward Churchill and other academics, that there are no innocents. Here I am referring to the fact that our enemy frequently hides among alleged innocents, and, knowing of our fears in this regard, uses that refuge to punish our young men and women. The answer—kill these women and children because they are actually combatants. Not to do so will make certain that our young people will experience many more casualties than would otherwise be the case. Again, folks, it’s war!!! Fight it or leave it, but don’t pussyfoot around because to do so results in the unnecessary deaths of a lot of our own people.
Indeed, the entire anti-war left emboldens the enemy, prolongs the war, makes victory damn near impossible, and greatly increases the casualties on both sides. In short, as my oldest son is want to say—GO BIG OR STAY HOME.
Let’s use a couple of historical examples to establish the efficacy of this approach. Let’s go back to Harry Truman’s use of the atomic bomb. We estimated our losses to be horrific if we invaded the Japanese mainland. And, judging from our losses in our island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific—i.e. Guadal Canal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Saipan, etc.—our estimates were probably low. And it is also clear that we would not have staged such an invasion until we had done to Japan what we did to Germany—bomb it into oblivion. This would mean that we would probably lose at least a half a million of our boys, and probably about 7 or 8 million Japanese over a prolonged period of time. Instead, Truman took out 250,000 Japanese citizens, destroying the Japs will to fight, and ended the war in a week. Now critics can argue that Harry should have dropped the bomb on a deserted island and that might have had the same effect. Possibly, we’ll never know. It is also possible that it might have stiffened their back; that they mght have shot down the Enola Gay, etc., etc. What we do know is that the war “a hellish war—ended one week after Truman dropped the bomb. My reaction—way to go Harry.
Another idiotic example favored by academic airheads is Sherman’s march through Georgia. And that is an even better illustration of how to fight a war. We lost over 600,000 lives in the Civil War (in a brutal, hand to hand confrontation; war was a much more personal experience in those days—you fought it in distances of feet, not miles—giving you a chance to live amidst the carnage in which you we were participating). If Lincoln had had Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan in charge of his military efforts in 1860 instead of 1864, I believe the war would have been over by 1864. Instead, he had McClellan, a preening dandy, who refused to fight (Lincoln said he had
“ the slows,” ) and a host of other generals unsuited to the task at hand.
The point is that, in war, your effort is to destroy the enemy’s will to fight—you do that by slaughtering a goodly number of them up front and thereby having to kill a lot less of them later on. And oh yes, a lot less of your people die, which seems to be overlooked by our timid friends on the left who are so preoccupied with their search for Utopia that they don’t seem to realize that they are living in it.
I could go on here indefinitely. The recent Israeli war in Lebanon, and the ridiculous concern with “disproportionate” Lebanese casualties is a great case in point. Israel has about 5 and