War has changed. Leaders are constantly looking to make war more civilized. Less brutal. Trying to lessen civilian casualties. But here is a news flash! War is brutal. Civilian casualties are necessary. If we are going to wage war successfully, it’s time that we start accepting the casualties of war.
Throughout time, leaders have looked for ways to lessen civilian casualties. Whether that be lining two armies across a field from each other and letting them take turns in killing each other until one side retreats or using laser targeted munitions to destroy only military targets. While this may win battles, it is no way to win a war.
The wars we have fought in the last 60 years have largely been unsuccessful do to the idea that we must win the hearts and minds of the civilians and then they will turn on their own armies and thus bring an end to the conflict. It has not worked.
At the outset of the Korean conflict, we could have easily united the country and lost far fewer American soldiers if we would have had the fortitude to eradicate a couple of North Korean cities.
In Vietnam, we worked more to win over the people we were supposedly there to help than we worked toward defeating the enemy.
People do not surrender by conducting war in a genteel manner. You win a war by a show of force. That force must be felt throughout the entire enemy and place a deep-seated fear in them that every time they pick up a weapon against us, they are going to die. They must realize the threat of death and that it can be around any corner waiting for them at any moment.
The cold war did not end because of the numerous treatied that were negotiated and signed by different parties. The cold war ended by a show of superior strength that nearly bankrupted our chief adversary who could no longer afford to maintain its own arsenal and the several other countries where they supported totalitarian regimes.
In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars we see the same things happening. We only go after military targets and leave enemy forces to survive and gain strength in non-military areas.
We leave Iraq in no better shape than when we sent troops in there. In 2014, we will leave Afghanistan the same way.
After thirteen years, countless lives lost and more than a trillion dollars spent, we will not have made the world any safer than when we began.
In order to win a war you must not only overpower them, you must instill in them a sense of hopelessness in trying to fight back. You must break their spirit.
If we look through history, we can see how wars have been won.
The civil war in the USA was largely a stalemate until the Union became more aggressive and began a more destrucive offensive that eventually caused the South to surrender. The North far outnumbered the Confederates in most battles, but until they began practicing a more brutal art of war, they could not sustain any progress. When they quit trying to win the hearts and minds of the Southern people and started beating them into submission, they won the war.
Alexander the Great rolled through the Middle-East, not because he coddled his enemies, but because he dominated them. Later, when he started to embrace the customs of some his defeated rivals, it spread dissent through his own army and made his conquest came to an end and eventually cost him his life.
The Roman empire grew because of the take no prisoners attitude of its Generals.
Even Adolph Hitler, with the German Blitzkreig, knew that domination was the way to win a war. Fortunately, the Allied forces proved to be just as brutal and bombed the hell out of Germany before advancing with an incredible ferociousness to crush the Nazis.
On the other side of the world, it took completely obliterating two major Japanese cities to bring an end to Japanese aggression.
The problem with the USA in war todat is that we are more concerned about what the rest of the world thinks about us than we do about actually winning a war. War is hell! It is not an exercise in political correctness.
As we have become more and more politically correct at home, afraid we might hurt someones feelings, we have also caved in to peer pressure from the rest of the world. If we are going to engage in wars, it is time to start winning them again. Enough of wasting resources, money and American lives, just to leave a country in the same state at the end as it was when we began.
It’s time to accept the casualties of war and kick ass… or just stay home.
