Losing the Will to Fight

American Conservative Magazine ^ | 10/7/06 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[duckln]

Snip

In the aftermath of 9/11, when President Bush ordered the U.S. military to remove the Taliban, who had given sanctuary to al-Qaeda and Osama, America was with him. When he identified Saddam as an integral part of an Axis of Evil hell-bent on America’s destruction, the nation supported him.

Now America is not so sure.

Preventive war as the antidote to terror seems, now that Anbar province has become the world’s newest base camp of terror, to have failed us. Democracy as the surest guarantee of U.S. security, now that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Moqtada al-Sadr are rolling up election victories, seems a less persuasive proposition.

Like the French, British, and Russians, the Americans, last of the Western imperial powers, are looking homeward. The cost of empire is too high, and our willingness to pay the butcher’s bill has diminished.

SOURCE: American Conservative

[duckln]

A little French in historical perspective. For all his faults, Pat can nail it. For once he is not bashing W.

[misterrob]

Pat is an old school isolationist who sees empire building in Bush's foreign policy.

He's wrong.

[hsalaw]

So what's Pat's alternative? That we withdraw behind our borders, cease all contact with all other countries, and erect that invisible energy field?

[lonestar67]

Top half is quite correct but the bottom half is quite flawed.

There has never in human history been such an abject difference in power relations. America is alone in absolute power. With nuclear weapons and various hard assets we can exterminate or obliterate all enemies. All wars are fought within a context of our flexible aesthetic. How do we wnt the world to be and how flexible are we willing to be in seeing the world become America.

Cruise missiles, predators, satellites, and aerial systems have brought killing to a new discretionary state of ease. Despite all the histrionics about America's failings, we have never been in greater control of the world and never has any previous hegemon enjoyed such a wide differential. This explains Buchannan's incomplete analysis that we fail to see an existential threat. Should such a threat even begin to emerge, the complete annihilation of the sponsoring culture is literally a push of a button away.

[outdriving]

What do you call it. "Nation Building"

And did you miss his remark about abortion vs immigration? Someone who has the cajones to tell it like it is.

For all his faults, Pat is is far more grounded in reality than most.

[duckln]

Sounds like he saying we should get on with it or leave.
Like Rush says, it's time to quit pussy footing around.

[hsalaw]

Sounds like he saying we should get on with it or leave.

Really? Well, I couldn't argue with that, although I'm of the "get on with it" school. But it sounded to me like he's criticizing any foreign intervention on the basis it makes us "empire builders." I think that's a little hysterical on his part.

[Fee]

Ditto. If many freepers take the time to read GWB foreign policy position paper that was published shortly after he came to office, it reads like a Wilsonian Foreign Policy. We will use soft power and military power to convert nondemocratic nations into democratic ones. It would be a great policy if we had a large Army to back the policy objectives, because the dictatorships of the world are not going to sit idly by to let the US use their cultural, economical, political and even military power to throw them out of power. Iraq has taught us that occupying a country requires manpower and boots on the ground. It also requires public patience to see the nation building process thru. A negative MSM, a political opposition (liberal Dems/leftwing liberals) that did not hesitate to highlight military mistakes, and a ACLU like judical system made a short works of our patience. Even if GWB wins the war, future presidents seeing the political toll that GWB took, will hesitate to commit US troops abroad short of a direct attack to the US mainland.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Even if GWB wins the war, future presidents seeing the political toll that GWB took, will hesitate to commit US troops abroad short of a direct attack to the US mainland.

Ummmmm! Pardon me, have you ever heard of 9/11??

[outdriving]

"There has never in human history been such an abject difference in power relations. America is alone in absolute power. With nuclear weapons and various hard assets we can exterminate or obliterate all enemies. All wars are fought within a context of our flexible aesthetic. How do we wnt the world to be and how flexible are we willing to be in seeing the world become America.

Cruise missiles, predators, satellites, and aerial systems have brought killing to a new discretionary state of ease. Despite all the histrionics about America's failings, we have never been in greater control of the world and never has any previous hegemon enjoyed such a wide differential. This explains Buchannan's incomplete analysis that we fail to see an existential threat. Should such a threat even begin to emerge, the complete annihilation of the sponsoring culture is literally a push of a button away."

Your incomplete analysis disregards the internal threats. Specifically Globalism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, and Immigration.

Our ability to "push the button" in a timely manner assumes a clear "existential threat". But there is none. Our threats do not come from invading armies.

It is the internal threats that will destroy our way of life and render us impotent to resist future external threats.

Just as we are impotent to fight a guerrilla war in Iraq unless we are willing to commit "atrocities" by current western standards, we are impotent to fight internal threats unless we reject relativism and embrace our traditional culture.

There is a big difference between having great killing power and the will to use it. Assume your "existential threat" is China, for instance. How do we explain to all the ethnic Chinese in our country that we must commit genocide against their motherland? If we are not willing to do that, then your scenario is meaningless.

[outdriving]

History has also taught us that you cannot win a guerrilla war in hostile territory without subjugation of the resistance through mass killing of civilians and destruction of their farms and villages. It's the only way. Show me one example otherwise.

Ugly as it is, that's the facts. We either find the inner barbarian, or we get the hell out and topple the next government that comes along.

[Fee]

We enter the war against Iraq with 70 percent public support and when casualties hit 2500 KIA, support dropped to 50 percent. Today it stands at 40 percent (with 2800 KIA). All the people who supported the war initially heard of 9/11, what happened to them? If 9/11 made an impression, all the negative MSM would not have shakened that support. This is a US strategic weakness that all good US leaders must be aware of. We cannot fight long drawn out wars which will wear on the public patience, because we are a democracy that will not censor the news nor muzzle the political opposition. It happened during Vietnam (we won the battles but lost the homefront war) and we are seeing the same possibility right now in Iraq.

[Fee]

Ironicly we are winning the war in Iraq. We did it by taking advantage of the tribal level politics. Today there are only two remaining fronts in Iraq - Anbar province (a large sparse Sunni province) and Baghdad. Recently the Sunni tribal leaders decided that the current Iraqi government is a reality and the heavy handed tactics of the Al Qaida insurgents were contrary to their interests. Two weeks ago, the Sunni tribal leaders raised a 30,000 men militia to root out AQ fighters. In Baghdad, we are facing sectarian violence carried out by Shiite death squads and Sunni bombers. This can be rooted out by constant patrol/cordon sweeps by the joint US/Iraqi forces coupled by behind the scenes political negotiations. This takes time and troops. In the meantime the Iraqi police/army is getting larger and more experience with each passing year. The problem with this war is a negative MSM, political opposition, leftwing peace movement and liberal activists judges who are undermining the US public by constant opportunism and barrage of reporting only bad news. What is even more disturbing is bureacracies (State and CIA) who have policy differences with GWB are leaking classified info to the MSM to undermind the GWB policy. Such political, policy disunity in government, a treasonous peace movement, and negative MSM are doing damage to our war leader. Other politicians who want to be President are taking note. IMHO it is not our sophisticated approach to fighting the enemy that is making us lose, but rather our domestic idiosyncracies as a democratic society that is killing our ability to win the war by underminding the public support for the war.

[Alfonso1000]

"By historical standards, the war on terror, or “World War III,” “World War IV,” or the “Long War” against “Islamofascism,” has been a relatively bloodless affair, if not for the families who have lost loved ones. Over 600,000 died in our Civil War, 3,000 a week for four years."


That is incredible when one thinks about it.

[Alfonso1000]

I like Buchanan. Even his stance on Iraq is far more well reasoned than anything produced by the left.

[nopardons]

Nope, Pat is a barking moonbat. His "reality" is his own delusions.

[bad company]

Even his stance on Iraq is far more well reasoned than anything produced by the left.

Yeah, now there's an accomplishment.

[Alfonso1000]

Well it is the primary thing I disagree with him about. I should have just said it is well reasoned, although I do disagree with it. Buchanan is too isolationist, but he is right about immigration and the decline of the west.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I tend to agree in general, but remember that the Iraq war has far more support than the civil war had among Americans a year before it was successfully concluded. While modern polling didn't exist. it was universally believed that Lincoln would lose election in the summer before the election was held. Since the policy of the Union was that the citizens of the Confederacy could not secede, and were therefore citizens of the US that would have left Lincoln with the support of far less than 25% of the total electorate.

[misterrob]

Nation building has to happen when you depose the dictator otherwise a power vacuum occurs and you wind up with something equally or even more unattractive than what was there before.