Posted on 01/29/2006 11:45:42 PM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
There is, in short, not a single enemy in existence or on the horizon willing to play the victim to the military we continue to build. Faced with men of iron belief wielding bombs built in sheds and basements, our revolution in military affairs appears more an indulgence than an investment. In the end, our enemies will not outfight us. We'll muster the will to do what must be done--after paying a needlessly high price in the lives of our troops and damage to our domestic infrastructure. We will not be beaten, but we may be shamed and embarrassed on a needlessly long road to victory.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
They aren't trying to defeat us on the battlefield. They don't have to. They just have to keep showing up long enough to break our national will to keep killing them.
Apparently you missed the point of this article entirely. What we call the 'Global War on Terror' and they call 'Jihad' is about nothing more than the will to win.
Suicide bombing is a cultural phenomenon, only one aspect of which is military. We're trying to fight 'terror' with military might, because that's our strong suit. They're opting to fight us with faith and fervor, rather than firepower.
Since we lack the will to use our firepower to its full extent, we're not smothering the fire of fanaticism; we're fanning it. We don't understand the power of zealotry, we treat it as a security issue created by rational grievances. Now that power is magified under the lens of a global media that hates America.
So here we are, sending a military we can't fully use, against a religious fanaticism that goes more mainstream by the day. It's no coincidence that Bin Laden and Zawahiri quote left wing American politicians, or that fanatical Islamics are getting voted into office whatever Mulsim countries actually hold elections.
It's a cultural war that we pretend to ignore, while occasionally treating the symptoms with kinetic airstrikes. That strategy didn't work for the Israelis, and in the long term, it won't work for us.
Zawahiri? In case you missed today's news, the Z man is still making videos. And when they finally drop a JDAM with his name on it, he'll be replaced, because we haven't broken the will of the people that support him.
On the simplest level, you are right. Not that I'm abandoning reason myself, but I think you're being too rational in analyzing the threat.
We don't have unlimited license to kill our enemies. Quite the contrary. Our desire for victory is very, very weak. We want to win, sure, but we don't want anyone to get killed, and we don't want to break anything, and we'd like to keep the costs down, and we don't want to offend local sensibilities, and we'd don't want to look mean to the Europeans etcetera etcetera.
In contrast, the jihadis belief that killing children who accept candy from American soldiers pleases God, and kill them without remorse. Such men require absolute strength of will. In a world full of cowardice and humiliation, men like that become heroes. Americans have a hard time thinking in these terms, but we need to start understanding this strangely resiliant threat. We dismiss the power of religious fanaticism at our own peril.
Maybe we need to be more culturally sensitive. Not in the touchy-feely Hug-a-Hadji way, but in the get-inside-their-head-get-inside-their-OODA-loop way.
As for the "we" that you think has little desire to win, I don't see it that way. We have some weak domestic enemies as well as some weak foreign enemies. Their weaknesses are of different kinds, but both are hopelessly weak. Our domestic enemies indeed want to do as little as possible. But that makes them quite unformidable as enemies. All that is necessary to defeat them utterly is to ignore their bleating, since by their own admissions they will never actually get off their asses and do a darn thing to us. The foreign enemies are perfectly willing to get off their asses, but weak in every other respect and readily annihilated.
What neither possesses is the simultaneous willingness to act with such restriction in the aim of that action as calls forth numerous allies and steady will. There is a reason justice is the settled policy of all the greatest political powers in the world. It simply generates gobs more power than desparate spasms of ruthlessness.
There is no power in ruthlessness. It is superstition to look for it there (the violence to conscience involved is experienced as overcoming the enemy, when it has no effect on him whatever). Look at the most ruthless parts of the world, and you find division and squalor. Ruthlessness as a road to power leads to Somalia - starving gangs of hoodlums fighting to the death over the last sack of rice somebody better dropped before leaving. Or the Congo - famously the greatest power of our age (sic) because all sides are willing to eat one another.
Meanwhile, where principle dedication to worthwhile cooperative efforts are the norm instead, you find not absence of will, but Marines, steadfast beyond the dreams of fanaticism, armed with actual honor, covered in glory, surrounded by the buried empires of superstitious ruthlessness they have annihilated - and also armed with the technological marvels the author foolishly slights, which our actual enemies would give their right hands to have a tenth of.
Kind of like those guys in the late 18th century who resorted to the warfare of the loser instead of beating the redcoats on the field of battle. They seemed to do OK.
Try all those methods of deterrence against the asymetrical warriors today and you'd have all those pinhead liberals marching on the Pentagon.
Too much TV exposure in today's world for drumhead justice.
I think Peters wants to do all those things--plus reduce reliance on ever more expensive military toys which may not be usable on the battlefields of asymetrical warfare.
The armor guys fought for the Abrams when the spectre of Russian tanks coming through the Fulda Gap in Germany was a real possibility. Fair enough, even though the obvious answer to an armored breakthrough by the Russians was the nuclear option, no one wanted to contemplate it.
But is the Abrams one of the best weapons to use in Iraq where there are no front lines? Sure, it got us to Baghdad in record time against Saddam's inferior army and armor, but then we found out they never intended to fight a static war with defended lines.
And the new air superiority fighter is going to fight which air force? It won't be as much use in the type of air fighting we are likely to see as helicopters and the old A10.
He's simply reminding us that generals always prepare for the next war by repeating the lessons learned from the last war. UNfortunately, the enemy can read too and tries to develop strategies to use against your strengths.
I point out that the two ABC "anchormen" merely injured by an IED received more media sympathetic coverage than the 2,000 U.S. warriors killed thus far on whose graves these two ABC fifth columnists danced a twisted jig every day of the war.
At root is the matter of will: we need Patton not Sarah Lister ("Marines are a little extreme").
Now we don't need to scold and defund Hamas--we need to kill them.
We don't need to understand Ahmadinejad's call for killing all Israelis as a fitting segue to his Mahdi/twelfth imam OCD--we need to put him under a building waiting for DNA results.
In my view, any detainee is one too many--it gives Durbin something to cry about--Durbin who himself should be a detainee.
We as a nation have risen superbly to the darkest challenge--as recently as sixty years ago--but today?
We can't give a child rapist more than sixty days--how can we rally a nation to actually win this "war on terror"?
Particularly when Democrats and their media work tirelessly for our enemies?
Our borders are wide open, the propaganda is category five against us, fighter funding was cut by a congress which raised its pay, while Islamists build nukes in Iran and sit on VX in Syria, and China hews to its published plan:
I favor the retro approach: Fallujah? Daisy cutters. Hostage-takers demand release of prisoners? Do the release a la KGB Beirut 1983.
"World opinion"? Why is al Jazeera still broadcasting?
Why have the NYT NSA leakers not been arraigned in full orange jumpsuit and shackle array?
Is there a war on or will the current obeisance to IAEA and Security Council niceties result in the next terror event being measured in kilotons?
Thank you, Cannoneer No. 4, for a very thought-provoking article.
I'll second that and thank you Phildragoo for spot on commentary, the best commentary on FR and maybe in the world, imo.
The article is probably representative of many secular humanists and Americans who believe in God, but bristle at being described as fundamentalist, yet seek to influence worldly affairs.
In a nutshell, the author displays a third grade mentality regarding a relationship with God through Faith.
The war he seeks to analyze is better understood if one even had a second grade education level of how God handles client nations whom have rebelled from faith in Him.
During the end of the Cold War, many 'freemasonic' beliefs influenced US national and international defense strategy. When I use the term 'freemasonic', I refer to those who say they believe God exists, but refuse to express that belief throgh faith in our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus.
Christ controls all of human history and when the US decided to create a 'Green line' to block the Soviets from a warm water port, rather than simply supporting the Great Commission, the US created its own worst enemy.
The Lord loves to take the downtrodden and defeat the arrogant by their own enemies. We have in effect paved the way for considerable suffering for the US as a nation, however, there is still an opportunity through His grace to return to Him, by His protocol, and not suffer further stages of divine discipline.
We appear to be a the third cycle, perhaps entering the fourth cycle of divine discipline. I will go ahead and post some doctrinal studies on the five stages of Divine Discipline in the religion threads for further review by those who may be so inclined.
FWIW, the author's equivocation of Muslim terrorists as strengthened by their faith manifests his own lack of faith and even slight grasp of basics in Scriptural understanding. It would be in his best interest to attend a Bible Bootcamp, before he continues to whine about the inevitability of defeat, or about the will of Muslim terrorists.
For those unaware, Muslim suicide bombers do not display faith, but display arrogance of a human nature void of any belief in God through faith in Him. Instead they attempt to perform good works to gain favor with God without faith in what God has already done to provide a relationship with Him.
I'll post a link here shortly regarding the doctrine of five cycles of discipline.
Semper Fi,..through pisteo in Him.
We know what the Germans would have done in WWII -
We know what we finally did in Japan -
We are not fighting one enemy nation or several axis nations
We are fighting a sub-human 1200 year old insane Islamic cult invented by a mad butcher who "married!" and raped young girls under 8 years old and that sends their sons and daughters to wear bomb-belts to blow up innocent civilians - including other Muslims
Somewhere between the ACLU and killing every Muslim on the planet lies the answer.
That answer is much closer to one than the other.......
All pansies and liberals and delude morons might as well slice off the heads of their children and grandchildren right now if they disagree
Per my above post, some pertinent studies regarding Divine Discipline.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1568429/posts
Reading the above notes should not be misconstrued as declaring 'Woe is us, all this is because God is punishing us'. Instead it is a series of notes for students of Scripture to understand how believers will be held accountable by God when nations He as chosen to perform His will, rebel, grieve and attempt to quench the Holy Spirit.
This is pertinent to the US War on Terror because many of our adversaries today were people not cognizant of Christ, yet many believers of Christ chose to use the Muslims as pawns against the USSR in the Cold War, instead of providing them encouragement in God through faith in Christ.
Whenever believers fall away from Him, then attempt to counterfeit His plan by a worldly cosmic system of counterfeit power, believers fall into risk of divine discipline.
If the believer fails to return to God upon one cycle of disicpline, a second will follow, seven times more severe than the first. This historically has continued through five cycles of disicpline, when the rebellious nation is removed from grace (after the third cycle) and destroyed.
The emphasis is upon the believer in God through faith in Christ. Other religious perspectives from a secular or comparative religion perspective simply display a human arrogance to His divine plan made available to all men. There is only one way to return to Him and that is through faith in the Son of God, our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus.
History presents many ironies, and the defeat of Al-Qaeda was truly one–for in its defeat, slaughtered in remote mountain caves and on Iraq’s desert killing fields, lay the beast’s reincarnation, for its greatest foe was vanquished in its very victory. For Iraq had constrained the Great Satan, tying up valuable and limited resources in a task which was necessary but insufficient both in timeliness and extent. For secular tyrants–while always a threat, and happy to bed down with the zealots of Islam for their own ends–nevertheless always proved more interested in their own grandiosity and power–and hence proved feeble warriors, useful idiots, propitious diversions which bought valuable time.
But Iraq proved valuable in one other, more critical way: it exposed the soft underbelly of American will, fattened by wealth, pleasure, and materialism, weakened by those with whom the desire to govern a cowering giant trumped any sacrifice needed to assure her survival. America could throw a deadly punch–but could be trusted to leave the ring should the fight drag on.
The Iranian project started small–seeded by the Khan Islamic bomb effort, initially prodded by the ever-present threat from the hated infidel Saddam. But the neighborhood grew vastly more dangerous when Americans rolled over Afghanistan–an albatross which drained the lifeblood even from the Soviets–and soon thereafter roared through Iraq. Surrounded now on two sides with hostile forces unstoppable by any conventional army–much less Iran’s–the nuclear trump card become paramount. With the ascent of Ahmadinejad to the presidency–a fanatic Shi’ite who imagined himself the Twelfth Imam–the dry kindling was fanned to a blaze. If the martyrdom of one was glorious, the martyrdom of an entire nation would please Allah greatly, and bring about his kingdom–which Ahmadinejad would rule.
There were, it is now believed, six bombs: two produced by Iran herself; two purchased from Kim Jong Il, desperate for cash to keep his movies rolling and his regime afloat; and the greatest prize: two high-yield nukes from the Russian Mafia. These broke the bank–but oil prices were high, their target was priceless–and money would be worthless after their use.
The barge on the Thames was next, eight days later. The Korean nuke was low-yield and dirty, but served its purposes well, killing tens of thousands instantly, many more over the ensuing weeks, decapitating the government, and rendering London uninhabitable for a generation. Paris was next, three weeks later, the Iranian bomb prepositioned in an unused Metro tunnel, it is thought–to destroy a millennium of Western culture while preserving the Muslim suburbs. Russia was next–not Moscow, as expected, where security was airtight–but the oil fields, setting alight enormous blazes which would burn for years, destroying forever in one blow the economy of the butchers of Chechnya.
And then–the pause. Months passed, terror reigned, as anarchy roiled Europe and the Middle East burned. Global commerce stopped; oil became unavailable at any price. Jews and Muslims alike were slaughtered, torn apart by angry mobs and incensed governments. Angry recriminations flew like missiles between governments and politicians, as the world economy ground to a halt. Riots were everywhere, martial law ruled, as all personal freedoms were revoked under pain of incarceration–or worse. Religion was outlawed in many places–and suspect everywhere. Conspiracy theories abounded–was this calamity fomented by America, as yet untouched in this global conflagration? The truth could not be spoken: the last Korean nuke was discovered, serendipitously, in a freight yard in Atlanta–its ensnarement now top secret lest public panic ensue. The two remaining, quietly resting, somehow avoiding the frantic search of all inbound cargo–one in a tanker truck in the Jersey refineries outside New York City, the other in a warehouse just south of San Francisco, located directly over the San Andreas fault–awaiting their synchronized detonation, that fatal day on August 6, 2008 …
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.