The Wide Awakes » Can America ever win another war?

1/29/2007

Wars are not won on the battlefield. They are won or lost by the will and resolve of the people of the countries who fight them. Unfortunately the U.S. has been so manipulated by the leftist media and by communist organizations, such as International ANSWER and Code Pink, that it has lost its will and resolve to defend itself, and to win wars.

American has a 60 year record of failing to prevail against strategically significant enemies. Our last victory was World War II.

In 1951 we went to Korea to stop the spread of communism. We left after three years because we lost interest and our will to win. We entered into a truce that today has possible nuclear consequences for this country.

10 years later we went to Vietnam for the same cause – stop the advance of communism, only to withdraw unbeaten, but certainly unvictorious, after 10 years. America simply lost the will to prevail. Millions of innocent Vietnamese were killed in the carnage that followed our exit.

We did vigorously rebound and we demonstrated renewed prowess in the First Gulf War, however, we did not have a decisive victory.

As we now see that Congress is ready to give up once again, it is not unreasonable to ask: Are Americans capable of winning real wars?

Some moderate successes, like Grenada and Panama have been offset by frustration in Kosovo and Somalia. Each conflict was similar. Despite superior materiel, tactics and supplies, we did not have the emotional will to endure battle. War is an unpleasant business.

It wasn’t always so. The Revolutionary War lasted 8 years (1775-1783). George Washington lost every battle except for the last one, yet the Revolutionaries continued the battle, with the support of the colonists, until they won. The will and strength of the American armed forces in the first World War are legendary, as is the unified support of the American people for their men in uniform during both World Wars.

The American Army spent December 1944 resisting a surprise German thrust into its lines – The Battle of the Bulge. Hundreds of thousands of American GI’s spent weeks of freezing nights in a Belgian forest, sleeping in foxholes dug in the snow. Cut off from their supply lines, many lacked coats and even socks. But, knowing that the Nazis were just yards away, most were satisfied with cold, watery soup as long as they got bullets for their rifles. These American soldiers, our “greatest generation,” held on tenaciously, despite suffering 19,000 lives in that battle. They went on to save millions in concentration camps despite enduring much worse conditions in the field than our forces in Iraq today.

What changed in America? Why don’t we have the “stomach” for a fight? This lack of commitment is evidenced in the resistance to an obvious need for a greater force in Iraq. It is displayed in the congressional games that focus on appeasement, surrender and withdrawal for political reasons regardless of the cost to America and the West. It is reflected in citizens of the U.S. who find three deaths per day repulsive, while ignorant that the freedoms they enjoy were won in battles with casualty reports that rounded off daily deaths to the nearest thousand.

That may be the problem. Americans, who have forgotten the pain and shock of 9-11, have also forgotten that once there was no America, and that its birth came at a price. And that the preservation of America and all that it stands for has also come at a price.

General Douglas MacArthur made this profound statement to the cadets at West Point, ““Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed.”

Ronald Reagan said, ““Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

We have to strengthen and re-toughen the calluses that our ancestors developed while building this nation. We have to not succumb to the requests for surrender and appeasement that the media, and the Left, want us to accept.

Our enemies are ruthless and committed. If we don’t learn how to fight – and win, we will soon be reminded of that.

Said Bear to the Right @ 2:00 pm | Permalink

6 Comments »

Very true and very well written..Our enemies are counting on most Americans forgetting these basic ideas…Our enemies have not forgotten their history or ours…

Comment by Crystal Clear — 1/29/2007 @ 10:34 pm

Can America ever win another war?

Wars are not won on the battlefield. They are won or lost by the will and resolve of the people of the countries who fight them.

Trackback by Bear to the Right — 1/30/2007 @ 12:50 am

I believe our problem with winning wars is rooted in an over-reliance on raw military power. While you have a similarly equipped adversary, with a similar mindset, our model functions. When we are faced with “asymmetric warfare” we just try to muscle our way through.

I think we have a lot of the job under control, but somehow we managed to have been left in a horse drawn carriage on th e track at Daytona in the media wars, and our “nation building” with people in uniform can only go so far, then you need to “import” the civilian expertise to really get that job done, with the Army/Marines standing guard.

We can win, but it will take a lot of involvement of those not wearing a uniform, but willing to take their accounting, manufacturing, program management, engineering, etc, skills into the hot area.

My current research continues with some use of past history of successes to address how we get out of the rut we are in.

Of course, it is premised on a President who can tell us what we don’t want to hear and then ask us to join together in making it better for someone else, so we also can have a more peaceful future….and that, with the extreme professionalizing of political actors, each maneuvering for personal power, at the expense of the greater good which just may be the end of this great experiment once and for all.

Comment by xformed — 1/30/2007 @ 11:17 am

I believe it’s due to allowing diplomats to make military decisions.

Comment by Cao — 1/31/2007 @ 2:26 pm

Cao;

At one level, I might agree, but “diplomats” made the decisions in WWII…

Oops…that’s what really tossed the final can of gas on the fire before WWII…but that’s other history.

I’d say it’s more a case of “uneducated” diplomats making the decisions. It’s not like everyone has to experience something before they dabble in it (in this case, having been in a uniform in a war in order to be able to command troops), but when a society has a small and shrinking number of people who have served, the “perspective” in the staffs of those diplomats as a whole becomes limited in their understanding of the “process.”

Analogy: Kind of like sending a bunch of electrical engineers into an operating room for brain surgery. Sure, they had HS biology, and know what a scapel is, and how to make an incision, but the “mechanics” of the process in the specific case before them are not within their experience:, ergo, the patient is in serious trouble, but may still bretahe for some time following the “surgery.”

At times I tell myself I’ll do the research to see, out of the 4.83% of the total world’s population, what percent of those of us now serve and hold the line against a swelling tide of anti-”western civilization.” It’s damn few and they are now basically just sticking their fingers in the holes in the dikes, while everyone else goes about their “normal” lives.

Just think, when the dam breaks, how long before the “popular opinion” is nothing but “THE GOVERNMENT LET THIS HAPPEN!!!!”

You know, now that I think about it, it’s more the generations (or two now - the spoiled children of the flower children) have found a way to excuse their lack of self-control and personal responsibility, and….some of them are diplomats and Democrat(ics)….all back to people treating people badly = poor relationships = strife.

And you know, very well, they want to eliminate the words of the man who commanded us to “treat your neighbor as yourself” as some kind of hate crime. I guess the “hate” in that is about being “commanded.” That implies you aren’t doing it right, and therefore, you need to first be offended, then second, remove said “offensive” material from the sight and hearing of those who cannot believe they are less that perfect, or that they are “OK” along with everyone else being “OK.”

Ah, the whirlwind we have caused, not by global warming, but by global hurt feelings…

Man…how did I get there?

Comment by Xformed — 2/1/2007 @ 6:18 am

I agree with the point of the article aside from the atrociously inaccurate/unfair portrayal of military history (losing in Korea when the goal was merely status quo which WAS achieved, indecisive victory in the Gulf War by going above and beyond the call of duty by flat-out annihilating a numerically-superior enemy force and driving them back hundreds of miles into their home territory with minimal loss of life on the allied side).

Comment by A. Nonymus — 6/29/2008 @ 3:05 pm

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