Trump is Right, America Doesnâ€™t Win Wars Anymore

“Having read his writings over the years, I consider him to be an extremely intelligent person.”

Read the 16 books Trump has written over the years. I consider him to be an extremely intelligent person.

“For literally decades we carped and bitched and fretted and whined and moaned and cried because we knew what was taking place in our nation. It was dying for lack of a good man.

Thatâ€™s right, for the lack of one good man, it was dying.

We knew we needed a man that wouldnâ€™t be a beltway insider.

We knew we needed someone who would shun focus groups and tell us from his heart what he thought without a filter.

We wanted an adequate presence of Conservatism.

We knew he had to be able to handle the MSM.

We knew he had to be someone who would double-down, not back down.

We wanted him to not be beholden to anyone.

We wanted his platform to look like Reaganâ€™s only better,

We wanted our border secure and illegal aliens sent home.

We want a wall, because itâ€™s the only wat to end this free for all.

We wanted a guy that was unabashedly pro life.

We wanted a guy that would defend our right to guns

We wanted a strong supporter of the military.

We wanted someone who would kill Obamacare.

We wanted someone to move us away from single payer,

We wanted someone who grasped our schools are failing our children, who wouldnâ€™t toss out Leftist phrases and leaving at that.

On top of all this, we needed someone who could trounce an adversary. He had to pull across demographics, and be willing to attacking the Left like they attack us.

Then we got the man who could do all this, he rose to the top off national polls and started winning primaries by unheard of margins.

And then we set about to destroy him.”

Oh how eloquent, how well said Doughty One. I couldn’t have said it better myself, and I didn’t lol. But you did. Bravo, bravo, and so true.

How can you win when you don’t have a clear definition of victory, let alone a realistic strategy to achieve it? Instead we have idiots proposing wars that make no sense so they can look tough, ie. “punch Putin in the nose”.

“Victory is destroying the enemy and winning the war. To secure victory, the US must fight wars with massive military might. We must adhere to the Powell Doctrine and the lessons of Gulf War I. The nation should avoid conflict if it can. But, if we must fight, the US must have a strategic interest that forces our involvement. And, by God, if weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re going to be in a war, we must throw in everything we have and fight to win!”

Not when you are the world hegemon and responsible for general security and world trade. The US fights wars today for very nebulous and ever-changing reasons. When the reasons begin to dissapate, or the cost does not cover the perceived benefits to the US political class, the wars end. And not surprisingly they end in a very unsatisfying ‘deal’.

The reason everybody harkens back to WW2 is because we were not recognized as the world hegemon — though by some measures we were since 1919. After Pearl Harbor the US was fighting a defensive war with an outraged electorate.

Until the US is no longer recognized as the singular guarantor of global security we will continue to ‘do deals’ to end the periodic brush-fire wars that we temporarily think are important enough to fight.

How can you win when you donâ€™t have a clear definition of victory, let alone a realistic strategy to achieve it?

The book The Generals by Thomas E. Ricks is one of the best I've ever read on the link between strategy and political goals in war. I recommend it highly.

It seems that you have come to my defense and not for the first time for which I am grateful and make this belated thank you. That you are also a Trump supporter reveals you to be exceptional among the class which is remarkable for its degree of objectivity.

For the record, contrary to flaglady47, I too am a Trump supporter if I have only a Democrat alternative to Trump in the general election when I will reach with the lever for one hand as I fall to my knees raising the other hand beseechingly to God for forgiveness for not finding a way to save the Republic from this Hobbesian choice.

I say this fully mindful of post #21 by flying lady 47 which says:

"For literally decades we carped and bitched and fretted and whined and moaned and cried because we knew what was taking place in our nation. It was dying for lack of a good man."

I have two reactions: first, of all people in this election on the Republican side the one man who is clearly not a "good" man is Donald Trump.

Second, this idea that a political savior can ride to our rescue is a very dangerous political philosophy. In America we have several times been favored by a great man in the Oval Office the greatest of whom was George Washington, but virtually every president rides in on high hopes and we find that he inevitably disappoints. In my lifetime we have the examples of FDR and Barack Obama coming into office hailed as our secular saviors only to find that they trashed the Constitution and assumed tyrannical powers, and in Barack Obama's case, he has consciously ruled with the intention to weaken us and expose us to our enemies. In retrospect we have cleaned up the image of the martyred Abraham Lincoln and nearly deified him but we must not be unmindful that among his virtues was also a constitutional overreach. More recently, Ronald Reagan has done wonders in diverting the Republic from a disastrous course, but even he disappointed in some respects partly because he was unable to fulfill unreasonable expectations ignorant of the realities of our entrenched government system. John Kennedy was heard to remark in frustration that he gave instructions to the bureaucracy but nothing happened.

To yearn for the man on horseback to ride in as a political savior is to betray a profound ignorance of the Constitution and the hard-won wisdom of our founders and framers who knew the danger of a tyrant and who brilliantly created a constitutional structure designed to frustrate the ambitions of such a man as Donald Trump.

It is not the want of a savior that is the problem but a culture, an educational base, a political structure, but most especially human nature which is inevitably the problem in politics and that can rarely be solved by a man on horseback. When we yield our Constitution, when we yield our judgment to the dream of a savior we open ourselves to tyranny. We are likely to get something far different than we bargained for. We are liable to get Caesar or, worse, we are liable to get Mussolini, Hitler, Castro or Mao.

To turn to a human creature as a savior is nearly blasphemous because it fails to recognize the biblical reality of human nature and it is in the case of Donald Trump doubly dangerous because he is a man of dubious character.

This may well be the last election for me and I may not survive Donald Trump's term. No one hopes that I am wrong more than I do about Donald Trump. For the sake of my children, my grandchildren, and my great-grandchild, I do not state my views here to "toot" my own horn but the sound the toxin of alarm about this man and about the psychosis, born of fear and even desperation, which causes our people to turn to an individual like Donald Trump.

Forrest : Memphis' first White Civil Rights Advocate

You have been a FRIEND a long time. Part of me just doesn’t attack people I know to be long time honorable. I trust their opinions to be sincere. I’ve seen them in the heat of battle and they’ve not gone after cheap advantage. I don’t expect it now either. Your opinions have been honest and integrity based in the past, so I trust the same for the future. Not to say we’ve always agreed, but I’ve always known I’m getting integrity behind every position you take.

That said, in the case of the last 50 years of US military campaigns, too many have been political and not focused on victory. It’s a grossly immoral thing to spill our troop’s blood over some politician’s cheap political advantage, but our “leaders” are in the middle of that again. We’re on the same page on rejecting that, as should be every sentient patriot in the nation.

I believe the theme of "fight to win or get out"....

Used to hear it daily in 1969. Probably originated even before that.

Probably in every incursion or conflict where the general's or politician's heart was not in it, as deep as the hearts of those who were tasked with holding the line.

Yes, it’s an old school lesson.