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Truces and ceasefires don’t bring peace, only total victory in war brings peace.
~ William T. Sherman
“In the days before the Nobel Peace Prize became a joke”
Yep, it’s a political Crackerjacks prize. Not surprising in that the Swedes sat out WWII, being `neutral’ and above it all, while selling their iron ore to the Nazis.
The Sultan is sounding like a Saint.
...and that’s a good thing.
The word Peace has been bastardized just like the word “gay”.
Basic rule of all societies has been when negotiation and discussion do not solve the problem, war is the only alternative. Winner of the war writes the history!
Citizenship in the World merit badge
Status: Eagle-required
Created: 1972
Discontinued: no
BSA Advancement ID: 004
Requirements revision: 2006
Latest pamphlet revision: 2008
"The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility"-British Sea Lord John Fisher.
Only Complete and Total Victory brings lasting peace.-Me
War, by itself, is not the answer. “Conclusive war”, or “winning the peace”, *after* the war, is the answer.
Let’s examine wars that are won by winning the peace after; and wars that are won, then lost, by not winning the peace.
Start with World War I. It ended in armistice, not victory or defeat. But Germany was treated as if it *had* been defeated, and subjected to humiliating and destructive terms, that to a great extent not only caused the international depression; but pushed Germany into the Nazi era and World War II.
The big villains here were the French, because they wanted revenge, not peace, against the German people, now a democracy, instead of against their former Imperial regime, now deposed and long gone.
Compare that to what happened after World War II, to Japan. After the war, General MacArthur(PBUH) took charge of their government, gave them a western style constitution and institutions, with an almost total disregard to their cultural institutions, and basically put them on the path that, “The business of Japan is business”.
They thought they would achieve their “place in the Sun” through militarism. He showed them that the path was instead hard work and business. MacArthur(PBUH) won the peace.
Iraq and Afghanistan are two more examples of winning and losing the peace. When H.W. Bush invaded Iraq, he quit too early, and left the peace to the scoundrel Saddam.
George W. Bush, however, invested an enormous amount of money in rebuilding Iraq; and we learned that every new, proven system we gave them generally worked, but every system of theirs we tried to reform was an utter failure.
Still, all told, the longer Iraq can keep it together, the greater their chances for a lasting peace.
Afghanistan, however, from the onset was a lost cause, because W. Bush made no effort at all to create for them a system, and a constitution, that worked; but instead he bowed to “cultural sensitivity” and tried to use worthless and antiquated cultural and government systems. So of course they were and are an utter failure.
We lost the peace in Afghanistan.
We could have written a constitution for them. We could have created a safe polytechnic school in Kabul for every orphan in the country, raising them to be the new government, military and business leaders of the future.
Because they were so bad off, with a tiny wage, we could have literally hired every unemployed man in the country to perform massive infrastructure projects, for under one billion dollars a year.
We could have won the peace in Afghanistan, breaking their 3,000 year curse. But we didn’t.
Proportional responses to aggression allows your foe to dictate the course of the war. This leads to long wars that you will lose.
I think this is a great article.