Can We Win A Major War?

Note: I Shall have to use a little mild profanity in this post. If you can not stand that, move on to the dog pictures.

I am wondering if we can win a war. Oh, I know that military for military we are un matched in the world. Trouble is, the political will is no longer there. My father's generation, now called "The Greatest Generation, fought, and won, the war against The Axis. Oddly, the people calling them The Greatest Generation would put them in prison, today.

In the ETO SS troops were seldom taken prisoners. Instead they were shot. Our Army Air Corps, along with the British Royal Air Force, destroyed whole cities. Our B-17s and B-24s flew by day, dropping high explosives, turning buildings into rubble and destroying the water mains. Then came the Brits, by night, dropping incendiary bombs. So may of the water mains were broken that the Fire Departments were helpless and the cities burned.

On the other side of the world the war was even meaner. Once we got word of how the Japanese were treating our POWs we got ugly. In Guadalcanal we managed to kill one of Admiral Tojo's sons. The Marines and Seabees buried him, of course. Then they put a shell casing partially into his grave with a large funnel. Then they put up a sign. "Take a piss on Tojo's Son!" Companies of replacements were marched there and the company would, in turn, piss down the tube.

I wonder what the penalty for that would be today? Since the Marines quit taking prisoners after the Japanese sent word that a group of them wanted to surrender and then ambushed the patrol that went to take that surrender, how many Marines would escape court martial?

It was more than just the Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors, too. The FDR Administration did not fool around with civilians they thought might be disloyal. We all know about the Japanese internment camps. Few, however, know of the hundreds of civilians locked up in mental wards "for the duration". Seems that FDR's Attorney General had discovered that there was no Habeous Corpus for mental patients. That law has since changed, of course. But back then, there was no appeal.

Today, of course, we don't do such things. At this point I am not sure that we should. Thing is, we may need to in the future and I do not think we can.

I also wonder how it is that the alQueda bigwigs can sit in Pakistan and how scumbags can cross borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan to kill our troops. How is it that Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia can send scumbags to kill our troops, plus thousands of civilians in Iraq. Yet we do nothing. Let's step back again to the WW2 generation.

Just before WW2 was the Spanish Civil War. Franco won that war, in no small part because of the help from Germany and Italy. Franco actually sent a small amount of troops to the Russian Front once WW2 started. Hitler and Il Duce wanted more, though. They wanted Franco to close the Straits of Gibraltar. Franco refused for fear of what the Allies would do, and the Allies would have. Does anyone believe than Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill would have allowed such things as we do today? Would one brick stand on another in Tehran or Damascus? Would the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia not be causing a world wide rope shortage as they hanged? Ah, we'd probably have shot them due to the shortage of wood to build gallows. Would not Islamabad be a smoking hole?

I did believe that George Bush was right to try to let Iraq become a democracy. I still believe that. What I do not believe is allowing those other clowns to interfere. Pakistan has nukes but no quick way to get them here. Iran does not have nukes, yet. Syria has nothing but a bunch of ill-armed clowns that cannot stop the Israelis, much less us. Why did we not send a few cruise missiles to the larger cities in those countries in 2004? We could have loaded the first salvo with stink bombs and itching powder with a sweet note about what the next batch would carry. This short guy in Tehran with the ugly suit may be eager to become a martyr. I do not think his bosses are. What would happen over there if they were all scratching and holding their noses while reading about the next time they glow in the dark?

I am not an expert on international relations. I have dealt with my share of bullies. The bosses of these Jihadis make a lot of noise about loving death. Then they dress like women when the US Marine Corps of Army get close. Why is that? Why do they have to find the mentally retarded, the Down's Syndrome patients, children to wear those bomb belts? If they love death so much, why are they hiding?

The military has the courage to end this fight. They certainly have the weapons. We can destroy anyone and anything in this world. What is lacking is the political will. Too many in our political and chattering class (but I repeat myself) care far more about what "the world" thinks of them than about the safety of my grandchildren.

An entire political party has swung to that way of thinking. I do not know why. The Democrats of my parent's generation elected FDR. He was ruthless enough to do whatever it took to achieve victory. The Democrats of my generation elected Jack Murtha, a man ruthless enough to tell any lie to achieve defeat.

Harry Truman dropped the bomb. Bill Clinton dropped his trousers. Today no one seems to remember that the "extraordinary rendition" programs started well before the 2000 election. Everyone has forgotten the Clinton appointee CIA Director that said Saddam's WMD were a slam dunk.

My war was the first one we lost. We did not lose it on the ground. The North Vietnamese were ready to give up after Tet of '68. Then the American Left called that massive defeat they gained a "victory". The American Left is doing the same thing today.

The question is why. Why have so many become willing to accept defeat? My father's generation was much smaller. I believe the total population was less than 140 million. We put 16 million men (and some women) into uniform. We rationed meat and sugar. We rationed gasoline. We didn't need to ration gas, trouble was the Japanese had taken the rubber plantations of Indonesia and Indochina. FDR rationed gas so so many people wouldn't steal tires. We had plenty of gas, we could not make nearly enough tires and fan belts.

Boy Scouts went from house to house collecting aluminum pots and pans for aircraft production. Women painted black lines down the backs of their legs, all the silk was going into parachutes. This in the age where no woman went out of the house without stockings. There were no new cars made, the auto companies were making tanks and airplanes. The Singer Sewing Machine Company and many others were making rifles and pistols.

What has happened?

The most important difference is a loss of cultural confidence. Too many of us simply do not think our culture and country are worth defending. We see oddities like gays at pro Palestinian rallies. It is odd to see them supporting a crowd that takes gay men to the top of tall (for there) buildings and throw them off. We see feminists supporting the culture of "honor killing". Meanwhile these feminists revile those of us who see no honor in the murder of one's daughter or sister.

We have lost control over our education system. Our children are not taught to honor our past. When I was a boy I was certainly taught of the horror of slavery but I was also taught of the fight against it.

Today our children are taught, and rightfully so, of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. Why are they not also taught of the thousands of white people driving their friends, co-workers and employees to and from work and home that made that boycott work? Why?

Today our children are only taught of the peaceful Native Americans beset by the rapacious white man. No child is taught that many tribes held slaves, that there were inter-tribal wars long before the coming of the white man and that rape, murder and theft between tribes was as common here as in Europe? Why?

Today our children are taught of the horror of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are not taught of the number of deaths, both American and Japanese, avoided by the fact that we did not have to invade. Why? Today, every August we see American Mayors apologising for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How come we never hear of Japan apologising for the Death March of Bataan? I remember the veterans who were training for the invasion thanking God for the Atomic Bomb.

In this war we harp on every mistake. In my father's war mistakes happened, the survivors buried their dead and went on. No one fired George Marshall, Ike or Omar Bradley after the breakout at St. Lo was delayed by our bombers getting confused and bombing our own troops in the dust and smoke of the first wave of bombers. No one demanded the resignation of Admiral Nimitz after the planners misjudged the tides at Tarawa leaving Marines to wade a mile through high water. Many of those Marines drowned just by stepping into holes and not being able to get out of their gear quick enough. Many more drowned after getting survivable wounds.

Yet today we have United States Congressmen demanding our Soldiers and Marines be jailed for hoax atrocities. We have Soldiers and Marines with their military careers over after being acquitted of imaginary war crimes.

I do not believe we can win a major war anymore. Too many of us have already surrendered. Nor can I think of what to do. We could hang the faculties of the Universities and most of Hollywood, I suppose, most of one Party and some of the other in Washington. Then, instead of being killed by the Islamists, we could die in prison. What to do? We could not even put a piss tube into Osama's grave anymore.