The Reality of War

Conservative News DailyFebruary 23, 2023

American Thinker – The Reality of War

January 10, 2023

After two days of being on standby at my fire company, my phone rang as I walked into my home the night before 9/12/2001. I was an Ashburn firefighter/EMT. One fire truck and an ambulance had already been sent to the Pentagon on the terrible morning of September 11. I was part of the second engine crew, waiting to be called. All that day and night and the next day we watched the TV coverage of the attack on the Towers in New York and on the Pentagon, and the crash in Pennsylvania. It was declared a successful recovery the night it flew into the Pentagon. We were then stopped.

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I was talking to a woman on the phone who boarded a horse along with me. She said that she tried to call me for 2 days and that she knew that I had connections in Washington. must Stop President Bush reacting violently the the events of yesterday. I was stunned. Later, I discovered that she and her husband were Quakers.

Both pacifists and libertarians share one thing in common: they don’t want their country to be involved in wars overseas. This is where the similarities end. Quakers do not want war anyplace, anytime. Noble sentiment. Neither do good people of sound minds, especially warfighters. Libertarians do not support war. They are prowar if our country invades another country, but only if that happens on our territory.

This philosophy is a problem, but I’ll explain it in a moment.

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A few days following the September 11th attacks, I was summoned to a meeting at the Washington headquarters of a military organization. Cato Institute wanted to meet with leadership of conservative/military organizations, so half a dozen of us met with the two Libertarian intellectuals. Cato men insisted that the United States should be absolutely must Not Respond to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. No American soldier, airman or sailor, nor Marine, was killed in action on 9/11. Yes, we had been invaded but those who did it were already dead. The end.

The problem with Libertarian war policy is that by the time an invading force gets to the territorial U.S., countless people elsewhere have been killed or displaced, their countries devastated. There is no one to help us. Now it’s our turn. Where would the refugees go? America is the last hope for humanity, as President Reagan stated.

Woodrow Wilson (WWII), FDR (WWII), ran on the promise that they would not. “send your sons to war.” Lyndon B. Johnson (Vietnam) swore in his 1964 presidential campaign, “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

American troops will not go to war in Ukraine, as President Joe Biden stated. This is despite the promises made by the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. (Except for Biden telling the 82d Airborne soldiers in Poland that they would soon be able to see the war in Ukraine.

While we do go to war on foreign soils, it is only after our allies-to be were bled with the enemy in Europe (in World War I) and both Europe, Asia (in WWII). If America had joined the fight in the first place, how much sooner would these wars have ended? How much blood and treasure could have been saved?

Truman’s timely response to Korea was not without fault, but there were insufficiently trained, poorly armed and poorly equipped occupation soldiers stationed in Japan. Vietnam shouldn’t have been our war and was criminally managed by Washington politicians and bureaucrats. The definition of “afghanistan” and “iraq I & II are “just war.” We were attacked (or our national interests in Gulf One), and we responded by going after the enemy at his home.

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In our interests, cold rationalism says that it is better to fight a war somewhere else rather than in our own land, on our own streets. That sounds callous, but the war is already on elsewhere, and the enemy must be contained as quickly as possible where he is, and defeated decisively. It won’t help the hapless victims over there if we wait for the enemy to crush them before moving on to our own shores. It’s a case of feeding the crocodile in the hopes it will eat you last, to paraphrase Churchill.

Most wars could be prevented by fearlessly decisive action at the first move of an aggressor, or by preemption. Hitler admitted that the West could have stopped his war plans dead in their tracks over Sudetenland. But we didn’t.

Even better is deterrence. Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. “If you desire peace, prepare for war.” (Vegetius, Roman general)

American democracy requires that elected politicians decide whether to go to war. They need to establish the broad parameters. They must then allow the military to fight for an absolute victory. If they don’t, then more war is inevitable. We had total victory in WWII and our former enemies now stand with us. In WWI, we had an armistice – a ceasefire. It resulted in WWII twenty years later. We didn’t win the war in Korea. Instead, we signed a ceasefire which can be reopened into war at any moment. Robert Strange McNamara, LBJ’s Secretary of Defense, did not intend to win the Vietnam War. They only wanted to prevent it from being lost. After the disastrous Paris Peace Accords, which ignominiously ended American participation in the war, the United States ended its involvement. It also abandoned the Vietnamese, Hmong and Montagnard, Cambodian allies who had put their trust in us to their horrible fates. There’s also Afghanistan, Biden’s treacherous abandonment to people and assets.

Putin will not stop at Ukraine crushing — history shows that the crocodile would have eaten another meal if he did. His appetite has been satisfied with Georgia, Crimea and Chechnya. Ironically, Russia and the U.S. guaranteed Ukraine’s sovereignty, security, and sovereignty. The Russian definition of the guarantee is different from that of American, British and Ukrainian understanding. Will we stand firm behind those guarantees? Will our determination not waver?

Russia is a nation that needs and has the right to be a democracy, according to experts. “buffer.” This buffer is expanding like the universe. It might stop once it reaches the oceans. Russia is expanding its Arctic strategic area and its military infrastructure.

POTUS, Congress and the President must decide whether they want to wait for a new war or do what is necessary right now to stop Putin and end his ability make aggressive war. Unfortunately, our leadership will not be willing to make this difficult decision. They would rather obsess about climate change and pronouns than be shocked when war requires our participation.

War is always looking for us. If it does find us, it will likely be with our pants down once again.

Image: Robert J. Fisch