The Winds Of War

Americans are tired of their world role now. But tireless men, like Hitler, like Putin, always find advantage in other nations' fatigue.

Where will the next world war start? Kiev, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Tehran, Afghanistan, the South China Sea?

Fight To The Last Palestinian

That seems to be the tactic of Hamas. I say accommodate them. Kill every man, woman and child In Gaza. Mothers encourage their sons to martyr themselves and the children are so indoctrinated with hate, recovery is not possible.

Thane Rosenbaum puts it better.

Let's state the obvious: No one likes to see dead children. Well, that's not completely true: Hamas does. They would prefer those children to be Jewish, but there is greater value to them if they are Palestinian. Outmatched by Israel's military, handicapped by rocket launchers with the steady hands of Barney Fife, Hamas is playing the long game of moral revulsion.

The people of Gaza overwhelmingly elected Hamas, a terrorist outfit dedicated to the destruction of Israel, as their designated representatives. Almost instantly Hamas began stockpiling weapons and using them against a more powerful foe with a solid track record of retaliation.

What did Gazans think was going to happen? Surely they must have understood on election night that their lives would now be suspended in a state of utter chaos. Life expectancy would be miserably low; children would be without a future. Staying alive would be a challenge, if staying alive even mattered anymore.

To make matters worse, Gazans sheltered terrorists and their weapons in their homes, right beside ottoman sofas and dirty diapers. When Israel warned them of impending attacks, the inhabitants defiantly refused to leave.

On some basic level, you forfeit your right to be called civilians when you freely elect members of a terrorist organization as statesmen, invite them to dinner with blood on their hands and allow them to set up shop in your living room as their base of operations. At that point you begin to look a lot more like conscripted soldiers than innocent civilians. And you have wittingly made yourself targets.

The Root Of The Problem

We saw a building sign this morning in Idaho for The Health and Welfare office. The reason I comment on it, is that below it in equally large letters it was repeated in Spanish.

That, my friends, depicts the root of the problem we have with illegal's. Yes, that’s the correct word. We don’t have a problem with a fence, our problem is we failed to ensure everyone is assimilated into the American culture. The culture we had in the 50’s, before we got politically correct and started making signs in Spanish.

Missed Lessons

There is a lesson we should have drawn from Vietnam -  don’t start a war you don't intend to fight vigorously enough to win. We did not learn from Vietnam and we repeated it in Iraq and Afghanistan. We won Vietnam on the ground, but tossed it away politically. Ditto, in the recent wars.

A war must continue until the opponents will to fight is totally and completely vanquished. The Civil War is a example, Grant and Sherman pressured Lee until he could no longer resist. WWI begat WWI as we entered into an armistice, not a surrender. Germany was quick to rearm and start again.

Japan and Germany were fought to the ground in WWII and emerged as democracies.

60 years after the cease fire in Korea, North Korea remains totalitarian and belligerent.

Until we kill almost every Salafi, we will remain in danger from attack. They are just as fanatical as the Japanese were in prior to and during WWII.

Another Military Disaster

I read The Outpost by Jake Trapper. It’s about a remote Army outpost in Afghanistan that should have never been. It was located in a particularly dangerous area close to the Pakistan border. Small, difficult to defend, 45 minutes from air support, down a road that only small trucks could navigate. And the worst part, in a valley with mountains on three sides allowing direct fire into the outpost.

Military history is replete with dumb ass ideas. The charge of the light brigade, charging machine guns with overlapping fire day after day in WWI. This outpost reminded me of Dien Bien Phu – the epic 1954 French decision to locate a base in valley surrounded by mountains that could only be resupplied by aircraft. The VC handed the French their heads in that battle and ended French involvement in Vietnam.

Afghanistan reminds me Vietnam in several ways. In both we were up against several forces: 1) a corrupt government, 2) no way to project permanent force to the enemy, 3) supplies from allied countries [Russia and China for Vietnam and Pakistan for Afghanistan], 4) ability to cross neighboring borders with ease, 5) an enemy willing to kill citizens to intimidate the locals against us. 6) locals who had a history of shifting sides going back centuries – the clan, the tribe, not citizenship is paramount.

If Alexander, Genghis Khan, the British and Russia could not tame the place, what the hell were we thinking? But, that is another story. Here we have Generals and Colonels deciding to put bases in indefensible positions – a place that anyone that has gone through platoon level maneuvers knows not to do – you never take the low ground by choice. Then compounding the problem by refusing to withdraw or put enough resources into play to make it work.

We have great people in our military. If only they had commanders that could make good choices.