[FlingWingFlyer]

And we can thank the bottomfeeding politicians, “judges” and “lawyers” for that. When the decision is made to put “boots on the ground”, they should be the first ones to go. Give ‘em a copy of their own “ROEs”. See how well they can do fighting a war in handcuffs with a set goal to lose the fight.

[TTFlyer]

With the lunatic Left and the so-called “conservative purists” attacking Trump with everything they have it’s beginning to look like the grandees of the GOPe are going to get their default candidate: Marco Rubio/Jeb Bush, the two-sided marionette.

And America will never win again.

[Guenevere]

Thank- you!

GO TRUMP!

[nathanbedford]

The nation has been able to wage endless war in the 21st Century because there is no military draft. No draft equals war ad infinitum. Average Americans don't care. Why should they? They have no vested interest in the military.

This is one reason why the left wants to reinstate the draft, so that it can prevent America from fighting wars. Of course, the left is not against fighting wars if is only against fighting wars against leftists. But the left believes that reinstating the draft will make wars more unpopular and I believe that is also the motivation behind their push to register women.

Since the elimination of the draft in the wake of the Vietnam War, technology has come to the rescue of our Armed Forces. We no longer will be fighting world wars with millions of troops involved in multiple theaters as we experienced in World War II and to some degree in World War I. Now wars will be fought with computers, lasers, satellites, drones, EMTs and, God forbid, thermonuclear weapons. We need technicians more than we need grunts.

Right now we have thousands of troops along the border of North Korea who are a strategic liability acting as a tripwire. They are effective only because an attack against them will bring in the United States but one must ask why do we have to be the bait? We see this same tripwire effect in place along the eastern border of NATO and especially in Turkey. Increasingly, we are playing tripwire games in the South China Sea with China. In many of our treaty arrangements around the world we have actually made ourselves hostage to our client allies who have the option of bringing the United States into war without our approval and certainly not necessarily in our national interests.

All of this is been obvious, I've written about all of this for some time including the futility of the Iraq war, Donald Trump is not an original thinker and did not think any of this up.

[Objective Scrutator]

We have nukes, we should use them. It is better to be feared than loved, and the Muslims will never love us anyways.

[Republican1795.]

Trump will I hope change that.

[puppypusher]

You can’t win wars when you have poor Executive leadership and Political interference from the Congress when things don’t go there way politically.

Just like the Democrats did when they found out the public supported the war effort in Iraq. As soon as they found that out they started attacking George W. Bush and pretty much called our troops murderers for doing the job those democrats sent them to do.

[PGR88]

America doesn’t win wars because everything about us is short-term, especially our culture, which informs our politics.

If you plan to invade a place like Iraq, you had better plan to stay for at least 50 years.

We fought a war in Korea, and our presence is still required there 65 years later.

If we had stayed in Vietnam, South Vietnam would be as prosperous as South Korea is today.

[Hugin]

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”.

[Tallguy]

“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 we’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.