War and Failure

Two words that the peaceniks like to link are "war" and "failure", but that is their side's view, to which they are entitled, no matter how little logic it contains.

War and Failure.

As History.

Read on.

I fought in a war that resulted in failure. The Viet-nam war. My brothers and I fought hard as individuals and units, but since there never was any cohesive strategy for advancing the battles to the enemy's stronghold, we fought vicious battles that got us nowhere. Eventually the nation became tired of the fight and caved in to the "war IS failure" advocates, and we were forced to retire from the war, having accomplished nothing except a huge waste of personnel and some tactical evaluations.

We could have won the war if we wanted to. We could have beaten the North Vietnamese handily. There were several opportunities.

First, since that communist dictatorship had mobilized their entire nation as fighters, the entire population was a legitimate target. We should have destroyed every building in the country, from the air and from warship bombardment. Had we done so, the remainder of the population that didn't die in the bombardments would have overthrown their masters to sue for peace.

In 1970 (or it may have been 1971), there were record ("100-year") rains in North Viet-nam. We could have, in a few hours of aerial bombardment, destroyed the levees that hold back their rivers. The results would have looked like what happened in New Orleans with hurricane Katrina. The majority of the population then lived in below-water-level farming hamlets, or in water-level cities. All would have been flooded, and the military masters would not have been able to simultaneously fight and recover the nation from devastating floods. They would have had to sue for peace.

Just after the above opportunity expired, their General Giap got over-enthusiastic about his overall strategy, which was working, but not fast enough to suit him. He decided, correctly as it turned out, that we weren't going to attack his homeland, so he committed ALL his forces to the battles in the south. There weren't two battalions of troops left in the North, and most of those were anti-air gunners. We could have taken a Marine Expeditionary Force and landed on the coast just south of Hanoi-Haiphong and cut those major cities off from the south and once again, they would have had to sue for peace, or withdraw a major part of their army from the South and move it north to try to drive out the invading Marines.

We muffed all those opportunities, and we did that deliberately. Our leaders never wanted to win that war.

Now we get to the present, and the War on Terror.

By all ACCURATE reports, we are winning the war on terror in the streets of Iraq. The terrorists have sent their best and brightest lads to fight us there, and we have defeated the best and brightest. Now they are down to sending their cannon-fodder, and we are defeating them in detail, WITH A 20-TO-1 CASUALTY RATIO! We have almost won the war, yet at the same time, we are very close to failure, and the loss of that war.

Here's why.

First, we fight an enemy who has proven capabilities for recruitment. The enemy has no shortage of soldiers. Currently, they are sending poorly-trained troops into the field, but they are still sending them in an unending stream. This provides the perfect opportunity for the (REDUNDANCY ALERT!) antiwar press to piss and moan that we are sending an unending supply of OUR young men to slaughter. The same press won't use their supposed knowledge of history to look up and see that no military force in modern times ever suffered 20-1 casualties (on the 20 side) and prevailed in a fight to the finish. Not one. Never happened. We have failed, as the side pursuing the war against Islamic terror, to properly inform our own people (or the rest of the world, most of whom could give a shit less) of our victories, so those under-informed people have begun to believe the antiwar press and disbelieve the leaders of the war.

Second, we have failed to prosecute the war properly. We have as many "rules of engagement" now as we had in Viet-nam, and the rules are preventing a quick finish to the war in Iraq. One example is limiting when soldiers may fire at vehicles speeding towards them. Since most of our casualties come from explosions of cars and roadside bombs, it is vital to limit the proximity of vehicular threats to our troops. Instead of giving them a free-fire defensive space where they are permitted to fire on everything that penetrates that space, we have them play a guessing game of trying to determine the intent of every vehicle operator that comes too close. That causes the soldiers to have to give up the advantage of their rifles, which is range, and come under the threat of the enemy, which is close-in explosive threat. Failing to control enemy movement means constant enemy contact with our troops, and that is a prescription for failure, even with a 20:1 casualty ratio.

Third, we have failed to put sufficient troops in the theater to prevent enemy infiltration into the occupied country. Their borders are just as porous to enemy jihadi fighters as ours here are to illegal immigrants. That is wrong (in both places). That is fighting with one hand tied behind your back. That is a prescription for failure.

Finally, or perhaps this should have been firstly, we have failed to inform our countrymen just why we fight, and we keep refusing to so inform them.

We fight Islamic terrorists in Iraq because if we don't we will be fighting them in New York, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. Just look at Europe.

We fight Islamic terrorists because they are terrorists, who should be struck down wherever they are found. The branch of Islam that is involved here is a tiny part of that overall belief system, but because our lack of decisive action allows the jihadis to continue, the rest of the belief system either supports the Jihadis or fails to oppose them and we actually are fighting the adherents of that entire religion. There are 1.3 billion of them worldwide. That's a lot of enemies and a prescription for failure.

How do we resist failure and still win this war? We declare that it is a war between our belief system, which is constitutional representative democracy, and their belief system of 7th-century Islam. We tell the world that we ARE, IN FACT, ON A CRUSADE to wipe that faction of Islam, and any other factions that support the Wahabbis or fail to oppose them, off the face of the earth. Until and unless we do this, we are doomed to failure. We started to say what we meant, right after 9-11, but we didn't quite get the right words out, and we have obscured that meaning, more and more, ever since.

Here it is, boiled down to one simple expression of creed:

"I believe in constitutional, representative democracy. If you oppose my belief, you are my enemy. If you oppose my belief with force, I will kill you in the name of, and for the sake of my belief. If I set out to kill you, I will not pause in my efforts until you are dead or I have died in battle with you."

Roll those words around in your mouth. If and when you are ready to utter them, do yourself and your belief a favor, and go to the range and practice, practice, and practice some more.

That is all.

Comments

[Anders]

(short, insane rant deleted)

[GUYK]

Well said. I am not against the war in Iraq but I am against the limited rules of engagement. I call it half stepping in a war and that gets people killed needlessly. The intelligence people claim that most of the ones they are fighting are getting supplied from Syria and if that is correct then Syria should be taken as well as Iraq. If Iran wants into the game then deal them a hand they will never forget with the same kind of shock and awe that hit the major cities in Iraq. The blitz into Bagdad was textbook except that the DOD and the top generals forgot one thing. Territory taken that cannot be secured is not territory taken. Allowing the military to disband without accounting for weapons and then not disarming the citizens was criminal in my judgement-for what it is worth. War should be fought as a war and there are no innocents in a war. Civilians get killed, cities are destroyed, and economies ruined. That is what war is all about. Going to war and not giving everything to win is futile in the long run--as we learned in Vietnam and I am afraid we are going to learn in Iraq. Our military is fighting and winning but our government, urged on by the left wing and the media is losing for us once again.

[Stu Clark]

If you need someone at your back, let me know. I'll fight with you...

S. Clark
CPL, US Army (former)

[Mr. Completely]

Very well written, RD. Why can't people see it?

............Mr. C.