Posted on 06/02/2015 10:11:55 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
~snip~
Why does the United States struggle in war? How can it resolve a failing conflict? Can America return to victory?
Today, these are critical questions because we live in an age of unwinnable conflicts, where decisive triumph has proved to be a pipe dream.
~snip~
The price of military triumph was often immense. In the Civil War alone, there were around 750,000 American fatalities—more than the deaths in every other U.S. war combined. But if the costs of conflict were staggering, so were the benefits. The Civil War saved the Union and emancipated the slaves. World War II ensured the survival of liberal democracy in Western Europe. For Americans, golden-age conflicts became the model of what war ought to look like.
And then, all of a sudden, the United States stopped winning major wars. The golden age faded into the past, and a new dark age of U.S. warfare emerged. Since 1945, Americans have experienced little except military frustration, stalemate, and loss.
The martial dusk began with the Korean War, which deteriorated into a grim stalemate at a cost of nearly 37,000 American lives. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the United States faced outright military defeat for the first time in its history—and, most shockingly, against North Vietnam, a “raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country,” as Lyndon Johnson put it.
After World War II, the U.S. constructed the most expensive military machine that ever existed—and endured seven decades of martial frustration.
~snip~
Since 1945, in terms of victory in a major war, the United States is one for five. The Gulf War in 1991 is the only success story. The dark age is a time of protracted fighting, featuring the three longest wars in American history (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam).
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Some might say we had clear strategic direction in the first Gulf War, but it was far too short-term in its scope. That's a major problem with a political system and leadership that can only focus on time-frames measured in two-year election cycles.
More like we get into situations where nobody can define what a win is.
That too!
You know, I opened FR and here were four of the stories I came across before the Atlantic piece:
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/21225
http://www.myfoxny.com/story/29215013/dont-eat-the-fish-on-the-streets-newark-residents-warned
Because we’ve become a freakshow with a cobbled together majority voting bloc that enjoys not only receiving political/cultural approval but financial support from the politicians they elect. That’s why we don’t win wars.
I don’t think we’re any shorter on strategic goals now than ever before. The big thing we’re doing now is looking at consequences. Sure in WWII we beat the Axis, which by the standards we applied then made for a win. We also beat the Axis in a way that guaranteed the rise of the USSR and laid the foundation for the Cold War and all of its little mini-wars. Which not only clearly shows we lacked strategic goals (if we were thinking strategically we’d have let Patton keep going East like he wanted), it also means when you look at it through the lens we apply today (did the war result in lasting peace) we lost WWII.
On one hand it’s good we now take the long view to our history and see consequences to how we so often half-ass things. On the other we might be over correcting and setting ourselves up to always feel like we failed no matter how many sleazebags we overthrow.
I have long thought that contacting DC before you can take a shot at an enemy combatant is the reason that we have lost so many wars. Consider that the nerds in DC often have no hands on experience with war and the lost opportunities simply because of the time factor and the PC way of thinking where the effect of a decision on the political situation must override the combat situation.
Pure BS caused by PC.
did the war result in lasting peace
Were these strategic goals for WWII? Should they have been?
What? No Bruce Jenner threads?
Honestly, because this is so enthralling to so many Americans (who actually endorse and support this fairy), that it gives us a perfect example of why America cannot win wars.
I don’t think we actually had any strategic goals for WWII. And yes they probably should have been. One of the big changes we’ve had the last few decades in how we view the world is the realization that if all you do with one war is set the stage for the next that first war was kind of pointless. And expending large quantities of human lives and pointless should really never be in the same sentence.
Reward for Obedience
26 “‘Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the Lord your God.
2 “‘Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the Lord.
3 “‘If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, 4 I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. 5 Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.
6 “‘I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove wild beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country. 7 You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. 8 Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.
9 “‘I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. 10 You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. 11 I will put my dwelling place[a] among you, and I will not abhor you. 12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.
Punishment for Disobedience
14 “‘But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, 15 and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, 16 then I will do this to you: I will bring on you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and sap your strength. You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. 17 I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you.
18 “‘If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. 19 I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze. 20 Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of your land yield their fruit.
21 “‘If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve. 22 I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you so few in number that your roads will be deserted.
23 “‘If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me, 24 I myself will be hostile toward you and will afflict you for your sins seven times over. 25 And I will bring the sword on you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands. 26 When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will be able to bake your bread in one oven, and they will dole out the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied.
27 “‘If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, 28 then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies[b] on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. 31 I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. 32 I myself will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. 33 I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. 34 Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35 All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.
36 “‘As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the sword, and they will fall, even though no one is pursuing them. 37 They will stumble over one another as though fleeing from the sword, even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not be able to stand before your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. 39 Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their ancestors’ sins they will waste away.
40 “‘But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors—their unfaithfulness and their hostility toward me, 41 which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, 42 I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 43 For the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. 44 Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God. 45 But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.’”
46 These are the decrees, the laws and the regulations that the Lord established at Mount Sinai between himself and the Israelites through Moses
I'd say you're quite wrong in that assessment. You're dragging in baggage from follow-on decades that were only vaguely foreseen by a few people. With the at-the-time information available to national and coalition war planners, WWII was one hell of a success against a tough enemy, and Soviet involvement was key since a) the Germans were already on their soil, and b) the gigantic losses inflicted on the Germans due to their own strategic and operational blundering assured our success in the West.
At the time we had information available to us that the USSR was not our friend and would be a problem soon. That’s why Patton wanted to keep going East, he easily saw who our next war was going to be against and figured they weren’t in good shape and we could win it real quick. We knew they were an ally of convenience and couldn’t be trusted in the long haul. And we still ceded them a good chunk of Europe at Yalta, and they took more of it than was agreed upon. Clearly we were short sighted strategically, and there were objections raised at the time. But we took the tactical route and ignored the strategic situation, and got the Cold War for our troubles.
Was the Cold War bad for us? It wasn’t good for Eastern Europe, no doubt, but it helped solidify the U.S. as the unquestioned light in the world keeping the darkness at bay.
Remember the Cold War had a few heat islands like Korea, Viet Nam, Nicaragua, Angola... lots of people, including Americans, got killed in the Cold War. Not to mention the fact that we made allegiances with a lot of really sleazy people, allegiances that often involved us keeping them in power in spite of their people’s wishes, which laid the ground work for Islamist take over of some countries, which lead us directly to 9-11 and the War on Terror. So yeah, the Cold War was bad for us.
And if you think propping up people like the Shah, Marcos, and Pinochet had us being the “unquestioned light in the world keeping the darkness at bay” you’re seriously confused. At many points in the Cold War is was our brand of darkness vs their brand of darkness.
Maybe, but I subscribe to the notion that the U.S. has been an unquestionable force for good in this world. Just the fact that there even was a Cold War proves that. How much easier/cheaper would it have been to tell Western Europe, "Good luck, let us know how it all turns out!"? Talk about a strategic blunder of epic proportion...
I’ve never been able to buy into that. I think as a people we’re generally good and try to do good things. But our government is another matter entirely and has spent large portions of our history being abject sleaze. We could have easily helped out Western Europe in the Cold War without allying with tinpot dictators around the world. Nothing about the Marshall Plan required us to keep the Shah in power.
ROE, expectations of "Nation Building" and "Winning Hearts and Minds" are prime causes.
We no longer go to war without pulling our punches!
We keep viewing events from strictly our own vantage point.
Look at Korea. The communists in the North eat grass and the South Koreans are booming. How did that fight turn out for the other side?
Look at Vietnam. The communist leaders ride around in limousines. The regular people are working for $100 a month and selling their boys to be raped by homosexuals. How did that fight turn out for the other side?
:’)
Before a war can be won against a foreign enemy, the domestic enemy must be utterly and completely destroyed.
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