Orson Scott Card: Honor

rhinotimes.com ^ | April 05, 2007 | Orson Scott Card

[Tolik]

Warning: don't get hung up on a few disagreements with a democrat Orson Scott Card - we have overwhelmingly more points of agreement. If you disagree with me, see my tagline    :^)

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Duty. Honor. Country.

Once these words could inspire the hearts of patriots. Now, in our benighted era, the elite in our nation sneer at the words and at those who still believe in them. :::

But there is such a thing as honor, and whether we name it by its right name or not, we depend on it.

Honor is akin to the word "honest." We say a person is honest if he tells the truth about what he has done and seen in the past.

But when he gives his word about what he will do in the future, and then keeps it, we say that he has honor.

These days, we are judged by the mathematical formulae of credit ratings. We are given points according to how regular and timely our repayments are; it is an attempt to assess honor by keeping a history of how we have performed before.

But credit ratings only touch the surface of honor.

It is honor that causes a football player at the bottom of a heap of players to refrain from pushing the ball just those couple of inches that would make it seem that it had broken the plane of the goal line.

It is honor, in a game of pickup basketball, that makes a player say, "I traveled," when no one noticed it but himself.

It is honor that keeps a married man from flirting with a woman who is not his wife. It is honor that holds parents to their responsibility to their children, sacrificing much so their children can thrive. It is honor that makes adult children care for their aging parents to the grave.

It is honor that makes a child assume the debts of his parents, or a brother to pay the debts of his sibling.

It is honor that makes it possible for us to trust the word of other people, for we know that they would rather keep their word than bear the shame of breaking it.

But ... who acts that way anymore?

The Death of Individual Honor

We teach our athletes today that what the ref doesn't see didn't happen. Lie and win, we tell them.

As we also tell our businessmen: Cheat and win. If your company has so many lawyers that no one can afford to sue you, then you can violate your contracts and steal what you want, because no one has the power to make you stop. And when you've done it often enough, you'll be so rich that Time calls you Man of the Year and people treat you as if you were somebody.

As we tell our politicians: It's all right to accept a bribe that comes to you in the form of faked-up "trades" in cattle futures – the press is on your side; they'll let it go. And what the press doesn't speak about didn't happen.

The shame of shattered honor is only enforced when we don't like the person who fails to keep his word. "Read my lips: No new taxes," he said, and then we pressed and pushed until he broke his word. Then we had him. For the people who voted for him actually cared about honor, and it cost him votes. While his opponent, who had no honor, was supported by people who did not care about it, and were in fact counting on him to break his word.

Honor means you can be trusted. Dishonor means you can't.

The Honor of Parties

We had an election a few months ago. The Democratic Party achieved majorities in both houses of Congress, but it did not do so by promising to impose a deadline on a war that must be won no matter the length or cost. On the contrary, that majority was achieved only by running Democratic candidates who sounded as Republican as possible in districts that would never have voted for a Nancy Pelosi.

But now in the Congress, the Democrats are enforcing party discipline, so that even if any of those moderate-seeming Democrats were sincere before, they are required to vote against their promises. The Democrats can do this because the press likes the outcome of this breaking-of-word, and the Democrats believe they will pay no political price for being caught breaking promises.

They believe this because it has been true for 15 years. Honor is something Republicans believe in, so it can be used to destroy them. But because the elitists who run the Democratic Party don't care about honor, it costs the Democrats nothing to break their word.

As an embarrassed Democrat, I am ashamed of my party, because I know that at the grassroots level there are plenty of Democrats who care about honor and wish their party had any.

But as long as the press remains silent about Democratic dishonor while harping on any trumped-up charge they can lay against Republicans, it's hard for many people to believe that the dishonor really happened, or that anybody cares that it did.

That's why President Bill Clinton could fire all the US attorneys, but Bush can't fire eight of them. That's why Clinton could scoff at congressional subpoenas and pretend they had "lost" files they didn't want to hand over, while Bush is pummeled for refusing to respect congressional demands for things no Congress has ever claimed a right to have.

That's why the politically correct are the main censors and suppressors of free speech in our country today, the deniers of diversity and the elitist enemies of democratic process – and yet are able to claim credit for their tolerance and love of freedom, and the media, which they control, does not expose their shame.

Because they have no shame.

That's the sorry state of honor in America today. It is regarded as a relic that only matters to those dunderheads who still believe in God and morality and fairness and decency and all those other outmoded concepts. You know. Regular people. Not the cool, elite, smart people who all have identical – and completely unexamined – opinions.

So why is it any surprise that our nation is also on the verge of losing its honor?

The Honor of Nations

Nations, like individuals, either have honor, or they do not.

Nations with honor declare what they stand for and what they will and will not do – and then they do their best to live up to those standards and to carry out their promises.

Nations without honor promise whatever seems convenient, but demonstrate that they never intended to fulfill their promises, and that there is no action so debased that they will not do it.

And on this playing field, there is no referee to deceive. There are only the other players, who quickly learn what kind of player each nation is, and act accordingly.

We see it all the time. Israel and the Palestinians signed an agreement in Oslo. The Palestinians kept none of their promises and showed no sign that they ever meant to; indeed, Yasser Arafat made it plain to his own people that he had no intention of keeping his word.

Hardly anyone even bothered to translate his words into English. Because no one ever expected him to keep his word. We all knew what he was, and what a government he ruled would be: without honor, without decency, without standards.

But the Israeli government was expected to keep its word regardless of what the other side did, and they were damned as liars and wordbreakers when they did not keep going right on schedule despite their having received nothing in return except broken promises.

The same double standard has applied in the Iraq War. Any civilian death caused by American action becomes a cause for castigation; the abuse-without-torture of prisoners held by Americans at Abu Ghraib became a reason to condemn American soldiers.

Honorable actions by American soldiers, heroic efforts to risk their own lives in order to save civilians – those go virtually unreported, because that is what we expect of Americans.

On the other hand, murders of civilians by our enemies, deliberate as they are, seem to arouse no moral outrage; indeed, the press seems eager to excuse the perpetrators of terrorism.

When Iran seizes British sailors and lies about where they were when they were caught, the protests are almost perfunctory. If we did such a thing to, say, Chinese sailors, the international outrage would be deafening, and we would be on the verge of war.

The difference in response is because nobody expects Iran to behave like a decent, honorable nation. We know that every word they say might be and probably is a lie.

We know the list of nations we expect will only keep their word if it's to their immediate advantage: Iran. Syria. North Korea. Sudan. Cuba. (The list is longer, but I'll stop it here so I don't generate too much hate mail from those who wish to pretend that honor exists where everyone knows it does not.)

We also know the list of nations who are known to live up to their promises. They sent troops to fight beside ours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But in all the world, only two nations that can be called major powers are known to stand by their word no matter what the cost: The United States of America and Great Britain.

We are held to a higher standard because we hold ourselves to that standard. Abu Ghraib shames us because we actually have honor; China does far worse things on a regular basis, everyone knows it, and nobody cares, because China has no high standard of treatment of its citizens and nobody expects them to, no matter what they claim.

Part of the reason we are a great power is that we are known as keepers of our word, relentless defenders of freedom and human rights.

We lost our honor once, when we withdrew from Vietnam with promises that we would continue to supply the South Vietnamese with the weapons to match those their enemies were receiving from the USSR.

But our Democratic Congress repudiated those promises and broke our national word. They voted to cut off our erstwhile allies, and as a result they had neither the ability nor the will to resist. Their nation fell and thousands were murdered, thousands fled and thousands were put in concentration camps – oh, pardon me, "reeducation centers."

Few were the Americans who faced up to what this meant about our national character. We had been dishonored. We had shown ourselves to be what Mao called us: a paper tiger.

Ronald Reagan did almost nothing to restore our honor. When he traded for hostages with Iran, when he withdrew our troops from Lebanon because of a terrorist attack without taking any further action, he showed that we were what the Democratic Congress had shown us to be at the end of the Vietnam War.

When a coup attempt was made in Moscow, George Bush Sr. responded just like Reagan – we started to make movements toward recognizing the coup leaders. It was only when Boris Yeltsin and his brave supporters stood against the tanks in Red Square that the coup collapsed.

But George Bush Sr. found his honor when Kuwait was invaded. "This will not stand," he said, and he put together the coalition that made it true.

Thus, after a couple of decades of being missing, we became, once again, a nation that kept its word.

Oh, wait. I forgot about that call for an uprising against Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War, which we then did nothing to support.

And about Rwanda, where we did nothing to save the Hutus even though any display of force would have stopped the genocide.

Oh, yes. Somalia, too.

Wow. Not much honor after all. Osama bin Laden saw it. He knew we had no staying power. Americans are all about honor – for a few minutes. But if you just keep killing Americans, eventually they'll give up and go away, because in the long run, Americans just don't believe in their honor enough to keep sacrificing in order to keep their word.

We're proving him right once again. Indeed, almost from the beginning of this war, the American elite – the people who are too cool to care about honor or patriotism, except when someone accuses them of not having any – have done all that was within their power to strip us of any sense of honor.

And now the Congress is usurping power it does not have. The Constitution does not give them the right to run wars or even end them – the president is the commander-in-chief during a war, and it is the president who negotiates the treaties to end wars, which Congress merely ratifies.

Congress absolutely ratified the waging of the Iraq campaign. Those who say that the ratification was based on deception are the liars – no one knew more than we were told about what was going on in Iraq, and when they say otherwise, they know they have no evidence and are making a false and dishonorable charge in order to achieve their political purpose.

(A heckler at one of my book signings declared to me recently that "Hans Blix knew there were no WMDs." This is utterly false. Hans Blix couldn't get into Saddam's Iraq to conduct reliable inspections. He might have believed that there were no WMDs, but that is not knowledge.

(Let's get one thing straight: A guess based on no evidence, which turns out to be correct, was not knowledge, it was just a guess. And a guess based on the best available evidence, which turns out to be wrong, does not become a lie, it remains nothing worse than a mistake.)

And regardless of whether you approved of invading Iraq when we did, the fact is that we did it, and we made vital promises, as a nation, to the people of Iraq and to all the freedom-yearning people in the Muslim world: Bet your lives on America, because we will bring you democracy and self-determination, while all that Osama or the Iranian theocrats will bring you is death and brutal oppression.

We gave our word.

The Cost of Dishonor

Now the Democrats in Congress are breaking their word to the American people (in the form of those candidates who pretended to be moderates when they are now proving they are not), in order to try to force President Bush to break our national word to Iraq and, in the long run, to the whole world.

If they succeed, here is where we'll be:

1. The power of the presidency will have been shattered, along with the Constitutional separation of powers. If Democrats think they can destroy the presidency while a Republican holds it, and then have all that power back when a Democrat has it, they are sadly mistaken.

2. We will be exposed to the whole world, once and for all, as an unreliable ally. Who will dare to bet on us again? It was hard enough to persuade Shiites in Iraq to trust us after President Bush Sr. did nothing to support them when they revolted against Saddam. It will be at least a generation, if ever, before we recover our national honor.

3. Our enemies will be so greatly encouraged by the fact that Osama was absolutely, completely right in his assessment of us, that their attacks against America and America's interests throughout the world will vastly increase in number. They will think this jihad is a war they can win – that they will be able to finish the job that was stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1660 – the Muslim conquest of the world.

(Anybody who still believes that nonsense about how jihad is a personal, internal struggle will find out what a stupid lie that is and always was. Islam prevails in this world only in places where force of arms conquered, or where the religion was forced on the people by their rulers. And there is no shortage of proof that the "conversion" of Europe will be a bloody one.

(And Islam has never been rolled back except by force of arms. Anybody who finds himself ruled by Muslim conquerors will suddenly discover that crusades are actually a pretty good idea – unless you want to convert to Islam yourself, of course.)

Even if the Democrats fail to force President Bush's hand, they are already arming our enemies with their most powerful weapon: The belief that America will act dishonorably.

Right now, seeing how Congress is behaving, listening to Nancy Pelosi's contempt for the Constitution and for President Bush's honorable effort to preserve the presidency and our national honor, even our allies have to wonder just how long they can trust America.

They can count. They know that the next election is only a year or so away. Isn't it time already to hedge their bets and prepare for the presidency of someone as honorless as Hillary Clinton?

And our enemies can watch CNN just like anybody else. They can hear the triumph in the voices of the anti-American reporters on CNN International: The Democrats will win, and America will surrender. Do you think that doesn't give them courage? Do you think that doesn't lead to more American deaths?

Our soldiers have won on every battlefield. If the American elite had supported them the way they supported our soldiers in World War II, our enemies would have seen a united America determined to keep the word of our president in defeating the forces of slavery and oppression. They would have grown discouraged.

Instead, our media and the Democratic Party and Hollywood have united to provide the maximum propaganda against our national honor and for our enemies' hope of victory.

Every American soldier has carried, not just his weapon and ammunition, but also the terrible weight of the dishonor of the loudest segment of our society. With that weight upon them, the surprise is that they have continued to perform so splendidly.

Supporting Our Troops

There are those in Congress who claim that they are "supporting" our troops by "letting them come home to their families."

This is the most dishonorable lie of all.

Of course our soldiers want to come home – when the job is done.

Nobody knows the problems as well as our soldiers do. But they are volunteers – poor souls, they're the ones who still believe in duty, honor and country. They joined up with the promise that when they were put in harm's way, it would be to accomplish something.

President Bush has kept that promise. He has used our military forces in the service of a noble and practicable cause. In the real world, democracies really have been established when they are protected, by force of arms, from enemy invasion and internal revolt.

But they have never succeeded when that protection is withdrawn. The enemies of democracy in Iraq are heavily supplied and trained from outside; what stands against them is the fledgling Iraqi defense force and the US and our few remaining allies.

If we leave, Iraqis will despair. It will either be surrender or civil war. And all who have tried to make democracy work will either have to flee or be murdered. We know that our enemies there have no qualms about killing anybody they want to.

The Democratic leadership in Congress doesn't care about the lives of our allies. They're just Arabs after all, and the American elite doesn't value foreign lives or foreign freedom, if by sacrificing them they can gain a temporary political advantage here at home.

And as for our own troops, let's not kid ourselves. Right now we have the chance to win the war against Islamic fascism while it can still be done relatively cheaply.

What about when Muslims are united against the whole world? What about when they are poised to exterminate Israel? What about when bloody war rages on the streets of Europe's cities? What about when terrorism returns to the malls and bus stations and port cities of America? What about when the nukes start blowing up on American or other free-world soil?

We will fight this war, whether we like it or not. But if we don't fight it now, when it's still cheap and our enemies are still weak, then we'll fight it later, when it's on American or allied soil, and the cost in blood – ours and theirs – will be appallingly higher.

The Democrats in Congress are not saving American lives. They're trying to fool us into giving them American votes in exchange for a promise of peace that they cannot keep.

We are at war whether we like it or not. We not only have to win in Iraq, we have to win in Iran, and very soon, or we will truly hate the cost we pay later, as an army of draftees instead of volunteers fights under far worse circumstances against a far more powerful enemy.

Remember the name "Nancy Pelosi." It will stand someday beside the name "Neville Chamberlain" in the pantheon of deluded fools whose poll-following stupidity led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their own nation's citizens, and the deaths of millions of others who would have lived if those deluded fools had done what was necessary to preserve their national honor.

[stephenjohnbanker]

A Christian website named dunderheadsrus : )

[Fawnn]

If I had the energy and money to do one more, I’d gladly create it! (But, all this has given me an inspiration for a couple of comic strips. But I’m going to need a nap before I can even do those.) ;)

In the meantime, I at least have this:

http://www.fawnn.com/gift_ideas/christian_and_prolife_gifts.html

[stephenjohnbanker]

Well done!

[stephenjohnbanker]

Well done!

[Fawnn]

Thanks! ;)

[Sam Cree]

"We are losing Iraq, because there has been no real clear goal as to why we are there, and as a result no real strategy to win."

I agree with that. Our president is fighting the war incrementally, as we did in Vietnam, perhaps because he doesn't have either the military resources or the confidence of enough public support to do it any other way.

If he'd said, "9/11 was a wake up call. Next time may be worse. We need to clean up the Middle East right now, so we won't have to worry later about terrorists setting off nukes in our precious cities. Let's strengthen our forces so we can do it right and let's start with Iraq."

I think the people of America intuitively hoped that's why we went into Iraq, I know I did, and that's why they lent him their support for the venture. But Bush has never been able to clearly articulate the above points, and he hasn't been able or willing to decisively defeat the insurgents, so the people are calling in their loan, egged on by power hungry democrats.

Doing nothing may not have been an option, but it would have been better to not go in at all than to go in and hand a military victory, not to Hussein, but to irregular Muslim rebels and terrorists.

[fanfan]

Thanks for the ping Alexander.

Great article!

[yoe]

E-mail President Bush. Let him know he has your support.

President George W. Bush: president@whitehouse.gov

Comment Line: 202-456-6213

Nancy Pelosi must not prevail in her efforts to further derail our commitments in Iraq and our commitment to our allies. Our magnificent fighting men and women are counting on we real Americans to stand behind them both at home and in the field of battle. Complain repeatedly and loudly to your Senators and Congressmen that Ms. Pelosi is trying to lose the WOT by her usurpation of powers that are not hers. America is not a Paper Tiger. Support the President.

[Vicomte13]

“I was talking about the military war. The one with troops, bullets, bombs and grenades. You must be talking about the culture war between the Left and the Right.”

So was I. I was talking about the military war.
Military wars are fought in the field, but they depend upon a base of political support to be fought to victory. If that base of political support fails, the military forces in the field do not achieve the strategic objective, and the war is lost.

By 1952, America had been battered in Korea, but still had an effective nuclear monopoly over the immediate adversaries (China didn’t get the bomb until about 1965). American and UN Forces were, with sufficient devotion of power, capable of driving the Communists out of Korea and achieving victory in a united province, recapturing all the territory MacArthur had lost. But Ike ran on a platform of ending the war. He got into power and ended the war, with a stalemate line. We have been paying the price of the failure of achieve victory ever since, with the perpetual expense of guarding Korea, and now, with the nuclearization of the peninsula. Failure to defeat the enemy has consequences. We failed to defeat the Communists militarily in Korea because domestically, the US president did not want to mobilize the country, declare war, and expend the resources necessary to achieve victory. Instead, we sent enough to hold the line, got a lot of men killed, and are still paying for that outcome sixty-five years later. What happened “in the news” in America is what cost us the war in the field in Korea. A major political party, the Republicans of the time, campaigned against the war and won power based on opposition to the war. And once they got power, they took steps that promptly ended any hope of victory, settling for an armistice and a draw.

The Vietnam War was lost in Washington, and in the living rooms of America. Again, an undeclared war. Again, insufficient will to fully mobilize, or to apply full resources, again because there was a domestic agenda “too precious” to allow the government to fully commit. So we sent a lot of troops, fought a lot of battles, and everything we did there fell apart with the collapse of political will at home.

Grenada was fast, but President Reagan assessed the public’s lack of willingness to fight a middle eastern war when he precipitously withdrew the troops after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.

The Kuwait war is another example. The military victory was sweeping, and was generalizing into a strategic rout of the Iraqis and a revolt against the government. But the American command authorities abruptly halted the advance, and then did not commit the forces to back up the revolt against Saddam. Soon enough, Saddam was back in business taunting America again, hiding WMD, shooting at American planes and sponsoring terrorism abroad. A year after the tactical victory on the battlefield, the result achieved seemed to be nothing but a status quo ante. It felt good to be part of a victory, but the weakness of political will in 1991 led us directly to the desperate war of attrition of today.

There never was much will to be in Somalia, and as soon as US forces were hit hard, our position wilted and we retreated.

And now Iraq. Military victories in skirmishes and battles here and there and everywhere are better than defeats and losses, but they do not lead to victory in this war, not on the scale we are fighting it. The political will is already far too weak to contemplate sending more troops to win it. The political will to end it is not strong enough to do so, so we’re in this holding pattern, with insufficient forces to achieve military conquest of our foes, and thus condemned to bleed a day at a time, while with every day the national will to keep up this fight ebbs a little bit more.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

You asked me MY plan, to set you straight, what I would have done?

On September 13th or 14th, 2001, as soon as I had the assurances from national intelligence that Islamist terrorists were responsible, I would have made a speech, a call to war, very similar to what Bush actually said: “America is at war with all terrorist organizations of global reach, and with all the states that support them” - the same open-ended committment to terrorism. But I would have made it on the floor of a joint session of Congress, and it would have been the operant part of a specific request, under Article I of the US Constitution, for a formal Congressional Declaration of War, against “all terrorist organizations of global reach, and all those who support them”.

I would not have had universal support for this declaration. The original,.very limited move to authorize the use of force had a handful of dissenters who voted “No”. More would have voted no in September, 2001. Some would have said that the declaration was too open-ended, that it was unlimited, etc. Some. But by no means enough. The country was united in September, 2001. The country was angry. Congress was as angry as anyone. 9/11 was a Pearl Harbor moment. What it wanted was an FDR to sieze the moment, sieze the floor of the Congress and demand the plenary, unlimited grant of the war power by the United States Congress, just as FDR received. This WOULD have been granted.

And had it NOT been granted? Were I President in September 2001 and the country was attacked and the Congress REFUSED to declare war, even then, I would have resigned the office and gone home to Crawford.

But there is no way in hell that would have happened. Congress would have given the DoW.

At that same time, recall, the European NATO ministers were meeting and offering the invoke the general defensive articles of the NATO treaty. They did so openly and of their own volition, in September, 2001. Europe OFFERED to go to war for us right after 9/11. Remember that? I do. We thanked them, and turned them down.

But I would have sent my Secretary of State straight to NATO, armed with the US Congressional Declaration of War, and I would have ACCEPTED the full offer, and mobilized NATO, and prepared to send military forces to several parts of the world. By doing so right at the beginning, I would have had all the parts of Europe, including France and Germany, right on board and committing forces at that start. They were READY in September, 2001. WE said no. And then we dithered and did not declare war.

With America formally at war, and NATO at war, I would have treated American domestic politics precisely as FDR did. I would have immediately shelved the domestic agenda of the GOP. The whole thing. America is at war. When the war is over we will pick back up with our bickering. We need a general mobilization. We need the taxes to back it. We need to monitor communications and have censorship of military operations, just like in the World War II precedents.

America is a country that runs on precedent. I would have very self-consciously invoked all those World War II precedents, bringing them to the fore. THAT is how America behaves when formally at war, and I would have taken America formally to war.

In my war cabinent, I would have had prominent Democrats. Tom Daschle would have been there. And Hillary Clinton too. The Democrats would have been fully involved in the war effort, including the planning of operations. They would have “owned” the war as much as the Republicans did. Churchill did that in Britain in World War II, and to a great degree FDR did it too. Both parties had to “own” the war and reap the glory of the victory. Politics ends at the water’s edge, and I would have made sure that happened by bringing top Democrats into the cabinet.

Wars require money. The tax cuts would have been abandoned, and taxes raised, on the World War II precedent. There would have been trimming of fat from social programs too, and it would have all been for the war effort.

There would be no “Department of Homeland Security”. Homeland Security would be achieved by going into the nations where the enemies live abroad, and killing them, and by using the regular FBI and CIA and NSA to police and hunt down domestic terrorists.

I would not MYSELF have reminded people of the Korematsu precedent, but I would have had my law enforcement and security heads hint darkly at it. I would not have appeared in a mosque in my stocking feet proclaiming Islam a “religion of peace”. That is bullshit, always was. America would not be at war “With Islam”, but Islam is the key element in international terrorism, and I would have remarked that. Muslim leaders in America would be scared, and SHOULD be scared. The anal exam and spying on all things in organized Islam would have been intense. There is no political correctness in war.

I would never have made an “Axis of Evil” speech identifying only three countries, and dragging East Asian North Korea into the mix. The problem is terrorism, Islamist terrorism. Bush didn’t want to seem to be picking on Islam, so he added in the rogue state in Northeast Asia. It was a distraction. Maybe, if the link were eventually proven, I would be involved in North Korea, but N.K would have been off my list.

I would have stated the list of states that support terrorist organizations of global reach: Libya, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan. They would have known, openly, and through back channels, that they faced military operations from clandestine operations AND outright military force. As it happened, Libya, Yemen and Saudi Arabia flipped anyway. We probably would have had to fight all of the others at any rate, and that would have been the plan. Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Iran.

There would have been no year’s hiatus going for new resolutions. There would have been no WMD contretemps. Those states support terror. They will hand over the terrorists or there will be war.

To accomplish a regional war against multiple states, and to be able to occupy the territory and rebuild afterwards, I would have used the general mobilization and the taxes to triple the size of the US military, and deploy the forces outright. It would have been clear from the beginning that the war was going to proceed front to front, terrorist organization to terrorist organization and states supporting them, until the central Middle East was conquered or the terror-supporting states swore off terror.

The Democrats and NATO would have been in the planning the whole time. There would have been nothing ad hoc about it, and no dithering. From 9/13 onward, with the DoW, the PURPOSE would be to field a several-million man army and conquer Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, swiftly, and to hold them.

When al Qaeda fled into Pakistan, I would have followed with full US forces right into the country. I would have ignored the Pakistani governments cries about sovereignty. You have terrorist enemies of the United States operating from your soil, and you cannot control them. We are going to enter and destroy them. You will stand aside. It is your responsibility to control your territory. If you cannot or will not, and a threat emanates from there to us, then under the law of war we may intervene. If the Pakistanis decided to go to war, I would have aligned with India, offered them the Kashmir, and allowed an Indian conquest of Pakistan.

The point would have been to maintain momentum, and a massive and growing wartime military buildup in the United States, with heavy and early use of Nato forces, to give the war a global, and inevitable, feel to it. What Bush SAID America was going to do, I would have locked in legal stone by having Congress declare (they would have), and by invoking precedent and using the authority to MOBILIZE and ship forces out.

The wars would have been considerably more conventional, because I would have sent far larger forces into the countries. Foreign casualties would have been far, far highter too, because I would have used airpower regularly to destroy areas in resitance and cleaned up with ground power.

What of domestic opposition in the USA? It would have been very muted for two reasons.

One is that the Democratic leadership would be in the war cabinet, and their fate tied to the war. The other is that press censorship would have kept the Abu Graibs and other atrocities off the front page. The World War II precedent is key.

So, that’s how I would have won the war. By now, there would be about 3 million US troops in occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria. There would be no over-border terrorists (I would send forces into any country that had terrorists at the border). There would be large number of European NATO and other troops deployed as well, and the military phase would be over. There would be a whole lot more Arab and Persian dead, because of treating regions in resistance as a military threat and using airpower, as opposed to making any “hearts and minds” efforts to police.

I would have ASSUMED that the countries to be conquered were like Japan and Germany, enemy states that support terrorism and whose populations are enemy, and I would have occupied them and fought them accordingly. I believe that when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.

I would have made a point of NEVER respecting mosques from which fire came. They would be systematically destroyed with airpower at the first shot. The point would be twofold. One: to demonstrate that religion is no sanctuary, and two, actually, to foment wilder resistance at start. Remember Najaf, when the Americans put down their weapons and grinned because mobs came into the streets and menaced as Americans approached the mosque? I would have opened fire and cleared the streets every time.

America would have conquered, along with our allies, and then reorganized the conquered peoples on more western lines, through a considerable occupation. There would have been no pretence that these people were our friends. They support terror, as nations, and I would have used the terror of the full, systematic use of modern firepower to literally cow civilian populations into submission. Where they did not submit, as at Najaf, there would be bloody massacres. The word would get out, and everywhere else would have submitted.

The “rules of engagement” would have been those used in World War II against the Germans: if there is resistance from the village, destroy the village and kill all resistance. Repeat from village to village until there is no resistance, or there are no more villages. Period.

I would have treated the War on Terror like World War II against Germany, and I would have constantly pulled out the precedents.

I believe that Americans, and Europeans too, love victory. And this strategy would have brought swift military victories.

I don’t believe that Americans care about enemy casualties for a generation, especially if the information is censored and not readily available from any open source.

I think that the momentum of a rapid, serious, World War II precedent military building and attack would have maintained the stream of victories and the military momentum, and the insistent invocation of the World War II precedent - in overt distinction from the limited police actions in the interim - would have kept America focused, and HAPPY with the focus. Americans were hurt by 9/11, but everyone felt the national unity. I would have used war and unity government to maintain that unity, and victory after victory to foster it.

History would call me a butcher, because my airpower and artillery strategy for reducing areas in resistance would have increased Iraqi death rates, for example, from the current roughly 80,000 to probably 5 to 6 million, at a minimum, but those details would be for the future to wring its hands over.

In short: I would have set up all of the political conditions for a World War II precedential victory, starting with the Pearl Harbor precedent, and my massive buildup and mobilization strategy, and serious, progressive real application of “We are at war with every terrorist organization of global reach, and every state that supports them”, and I would have achieved victory with high morale. I would have saved Iran for last, because I truly believe that the Iranians are not crazy, and that if faced with an America in the middle east with a three million man army, that has smashed to pieces and conquered all of the former terrorist states, and that is willing to use unlimited airpower to destroy resistance, they would capitulate and cease supporting terrorism. If not, then the invasion and complete conquest of Iran would begin.

No joke.
I wouldn’t have just mouthed the words Bush mouthed. I would have made them real.
That was my plan in September, 2001. It would be my plan today. That is how you win a war. What we have done is adopt a strategy for defeat and retreat, which will leave the terrorists intact to attack us again. I would not make that error.

As to NOW, what would I do? In Iraq, I would heavily arm the Kurds and an Iraqi nationalist Shi’ite/Ba’athist fashion, and get out of the way as they waged the civil war with the heaviest firepower, won after a brutal series of slaughters, and established they’re authority. They would be allied with us, who made it possible. I would in no sense attempt to do this clearing business with US forces. US forces would merely be a reserve force designed to vouchsafe the government. I would accept reality: Iraq is in civil war, and pick sides in the civil war and give them the means to win.

That answers your question. I was saying the same thing the week of 9/11. There was a way to do it. And then there’s what we’ve done. The one way leads to victory. The others, defeat.

[Durus]

While we should certainly dismantle social security as the idiotic ponzi scheme it is, calling our trade agreements with China "free" is a gross mischaractization. It's hard to imagine a more gerrymandered, over-regulated agreement. Fair trade is not protectionist and Fair trade is just as important as free trade.

We certainly aren't losing the war unless you count frothing mouthed CNN reporters wet dreams. To date we have prosecuted on of the most lopsided victories that America has ever seen. Maybe we are losing the PR war...that's about it.

[TChris]

Your long-winded diatribe makes for interesting fiction, but you appear to have only a tenuous grasp of some basic facts.

Military wars are fought in the field, but they depend upon a base of political support to be fought to victory. If that base of political support fails, the military forces in the field do not achieve the strategic objective, and the war is lost.

Even granting all of what you say here, how would you magically achieve that crucial political support?

The rest of your plan calls for a much more aggressive prosecution of the war. Do you imagine that would result in greater political support? Do you think the News Media would be cheering your name for going after terrorist with greater numbers and more troops?

Just what do you think the News Media have been complaining about, in opposing the war? I'll give you a hint, it isn't that President Bush has been too soft on the terrorists.

We failed to defeat the Communists militarily in Korea because domestically, the US president did not want to mobilize the country, declare war, and expend the resources necessary to achieve victory.

And how does one mobilize a country that will not be mobilized? Do you propose to somehow force the public to support your war effort? In a representative Republic, where you have presumably been elected by the voice of the people, do you think you can just ignore them and get what you want?

You seem to think that the President, if only he tried hard enough, should be able to make war protesters into hawks, peaceniks into fighters and reporters into cheerleaders.

It felt good to be part of a victory, but the weakness of political will in 1991 led us directly to the desperate war of attrition of today.

OK, but that has nothing at all to do with the current President Bush, nor with how the current war is going.

Some would have said that the declaration was too open-ended, that it was unlimited, etc. Some. But by no means enough. The country was united in September, 2001. The country was angry. Congress was as angry as anyone. 9/11 was a Pearl Harbor moment. What it wanted was an FDR to sieze the moment, sieze the floor of the Congress and demand the plenary, unlimited grant of the war power by the United States Congress, just as FDR received. This WOULD have been granted.

It's a simple thing to make that assumption. It's the mark of all good armchair quarterbacks to assume things would go their way. I'd hazard a wild guess that the political realities of the time were not quite so simple.

One issue in particular which was a serious concern with this administration was how our response would affect the average American's life. The Islamicist world intended to severely disrupt our nation with the actions of 9/11. This administration was determined not to let that happen, as it would have been an immediate and greater victory for the terrorists.

I think President Bush looked at this and realized it was going to be a long, hard fight. One that would last for years and probably beyond his administration. Knowing that, he had to choose between a full-on war which required great sacrifices from all Americans, or a more limited approach that would leave most of the country able to go about their business. It was clearly to be a long, hard slog in any case, but this way deprived the terrorists of their objective of severely disrupting American life. And we are winning anyway!

The only thing that could derail the war would be a weak-kneed forced pullout orchestrated by a Democrat congress. If that happens, it will not be Bush's fault!! I refuse to lay the blame for cowardly, America-hating politicians on the President's head.

As of right now, we are winning spectacularly in Iraq, compared to any other war in history. Measured by any normal military standards, we're beating the pants off them over there.

That's why I tried to separate the military war from the political/cultural one earlier. Our military has never been beaten into submission. It has only been betrayed and abandoned by cowards and traitors.

It's important to separate the military from the political.

With America formally at war, and NATO at war, I would have treated American domestic politics precisely as FDR did. I would have immediately shelved the domestic agenda of the GOP. The whole thing. America is at war.

But you ignore the fact that we're facing an entirely different enemy than we were back then. Our enemy of today does not wear a uniform. They do not have bases to bomb. They do not have officers to capture. They do not have a single leader with whom to negotiate.

As if that weren't enough, they do not fear death, neither their own nor anyone else's. The fact that large numbers of your enemy are willing to die, and to slaughter civilians, just to get a few of you, fundamentally changes the nature of the war.

The News Media for this war are entirely different too. Public interest in and knowledge of the war are completely different. You can imagine that it would be different with a formal declaration of war, but this would never be treated like WWII.

As to NOW, what would I do? In Iraq, I would heavily arm the Kurds and an Iraqi nationalist Shi’ite/Ba’athist fashion, and get out of the way as they waged the civil war with the heaviest firepower, won after a brutal series of slaughters, and established they’re authority. They would be allied with us, who made it possible.

LOL!

This is the clincher for anyone who wondered about the reality in which you operate.

In how many countries have we "made it possible" for them to be saved? One of the more recent nations we helped out was Afghanistan, when Russia wanted to eat them up. How did that work out for us?

How do our good buddies in Saudi Arabia feel about us? We've "made possible" a lot of things for them.

So, yes, you make some moving arguments and you have the fire of a fighter, but you really like the idea of ignoring what everyone else thinks. That's one of the surest marks of a totalitarian dictator. You'd make a good replacement for Castro. If you were a real leader, and acted as recklessly as you write, a more patient and wise leader would eat you and your country alive. He could drag you around by the nose, leading you with your anger to plunge right into one trap after another.

[true_blue_texican]

bump for later

[Old Sarge]

those dunderheads who still believe in God and morality and fairness and decency and all those other outmoded concepts.

My name is sionnsar and I am a dunderhead.

My name is Slings and Arrows, and I am a dunderhead.

My name is StarCMC and I am a dunderhead, too

My name is Old Sarge, and I guess I am a dunderhead as well.

[Vicomte13]

“In how many countries have we “made it possible” for them to be saved? One of the more recent nations we helped out was Afghanistan, when Russia wanted to eat them up. How did that work out for us?”

It worked out very well for us.
The USSR was defeated, and collapsed partially due to the internal dramas unleashed by that disastrous war and its consequences.

Our follow-up was quite bad, which is why we got the Taliban.

But the strategy itself worked brilliantly.

As to the political support business, it is axiomatic: you declare war and create a unity government. There WAS political support, quite solid, at the start of the war. You get the declaration and you bring both parties into the war cabinet in order to keep it. You use press censorship, under the World War II precedents, to prevent the Abu Graib style attacks on morale. With the Democrats fully engaged in the process, and getting as much credit for the war as Republicans, we wouldn’t have ended up with the Democrats using the war as the basis for their opposition. And with proper press censorship, there wouldn’t have been the grist for the mill flying around.

Anyway, you asked. That’s what I would have done.
It’s water under the bridge now.

Now, I’d arm the Kurds and the Shi’ite nationalist and stand aside for the slaughter in which they established regional dominance. With them in charge, I would pull back forces to distant bivouacs (as the ultimate safeguard) and let them govern their enclaves as they please, but using force to kill whatever sneaks across the Iranian and Syrian border. Pretty simple, really. There wouldn’t be political support for this approach in the US once the bloodshed started, but nobody else is going to intervene in that snake pit over there, and once the sides we favor are armed, there isn’t much left for us to do other than avert our eyes.

And yes, I think that a much more aggressive prosecution of the war, from the very beginning, would have engendered tremendous political support and international support. Men love a winning horse.

One of the key World War II precedents is censorship of the media. That is why making the clean break with the Korea-to-present past is so important. The symbolism of getting the Full Monty Declaration of War is key. It takes us to World War II. Pressing the precedents of World War II is key. Bringing Democrats into the cabinet so that they share in the glory is key. Oh, and you use the secret files to destroy politicians for treason in real war. Remember those guys who flew to Baghdad? You do not let their plane leave, and you arrest them and charge them with treason when they get back. It’s REAL WAR if it’s declared, and in our precedent-haunted society, that means the World War II precedents.

You mobilize a country by getting Congress to declare war. That has always been the problem since World War II: either the President was too timid because he didn’t want to derail his domestic agenda (LBJ, Bush 43) or the cause is so strange and cranky that the people WOULDN’T support a war declaration (Korea). The People and Congress WOULD HAVE supported a war declaration in September, 2001. The country was livid, and ready to fight. The unity was palpable. Bush squandered his FDR moment.

But suppose you’re right, and the unity could not have been gotten to declare war generally. Then I would have sought a DoW on specific countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria. And if Congress would grant NONE of those? That’s unrealistic. In September 2001, Congress would have declared war, at least, on Afghanistan. But we are moving here to the denoument of our discussion.

You wrote this:

“I think President Bush looked at this and realized it was going to be a long, hard fight. One that would last for years and probably beyond his administration. Knowing that, he had to choose between a full-on war which required great sacrifices from all Americans, or a more limited approach that would leave most of the country able to go about their business. It was clearly to be a long, hard slog in any case, but this way deprived the terrorists of their objective of severely disrupting American life. And we are winning anyway!
The only thing that could derail the war would be a weak-kneed forced pullout orchestrated by a Democrat congress. If that happens, it will not be Bush’s fault!! I refuse to lay the blame for cowardly, America-hating politicians on the President’s head.”

Well, my view is that it doesn’t matter where political blame falls or not. I am totally uninterested in the reputations of politicians, good or bad. They are just men. One comes one goes, completely and utterly replaceable. What I DO care about, as Card does, is national honor. To be defeated in a war is a DISASTER. It DOESN’T MATTER what the Democrats or Republicans did back in 1975. What MATTERS is that the American ally, South Vietnam, collapsed utterly, after a long war with massive loss of life on both sides, and that the Americans were scurrying out in the last helicopters off the rooftops. That’s what’s important. It’s important because it shapes future history unalterably, not just in Vietnam, but in the United States. You have described the calculations you think Bush made. I think he used a different calculus, but either way, it doesn’t matter. America cannot lose a full-committment, declared war. We are too strong. If we focus on a war, we will win. To not focus on a war with all of our might is to put our soldiers in harm’s way and expose them to political risk they would not have in a full dress, Constitutionally-declared war. The risk is simple, and we’ve seen it over and over again, especially in Korea and Vietnam: if the country isn’t committed to a juridically real war with a full mobilization, the political opposition uses opposition to the war as a rallying point to try and get control of the government. Ike did it. Nixon did it. Kerry tried it, and next year, if we continue on our present strategy, either Hillary Clinton or Obama will succeed. And then America loses the war and all of the losses of life and limb and treasure end up being utterly in vain.
My view is that you do not take that risk with American soldier’s lives, or with American reputation and honor. IF you are to go to war at all, you offer the people the option of WAR, with all of its hardships and mobilizations, and you cause them politically bind themselves to it, through their Congress voting for it. If they will not, and their Congress will not, then you do not go to war at all. If we commit, we always win. When we do not commit, we never win. At best we draw. Usually, as in the Bay of Pigs, and Vietnam, and Beirut, we lose. Losing a war is the worst thing that the country can do. It were better to never fight a war at all than to start it, go into it half-assed, find out it’s tougher than you expected, be defeated by political exhaustion at home, collapse, and retreat in defeat, leaving thousands of your dead on a field of battle you lost. That’s what we did in Vietnam, and to a smaller degree in Cuba and in Beirut and Somalia. My view of American military history and the NECESSITY of getting Congress to commit to war essentially rules Bush’s calculation, as you described it, as a chump’s game. He rolled the dice on a limited war, in spite of the bad track record and the certitude of rising opposition, when he could have followed the more conservative, traditional, constitutionally-sanctioned and successful course to certain victory.
So, perhaps you don’t do it, but I consider the Korean stalemate, with all of the American dead, to have been a strategic defeat for America and a moral victory for the enemy, and I lay the blame squarely at the feet of Truman, who could have asked the country to go to war, but chose to play at war.
I lay the blame for the Cuban fiasco at the feed of JFK. If you are not willing to go to war and fight to win, do not commit men to die in battle at all.
I lay the blame for the defeat in Vietnam at the feet of LBJ. With the Gulf of Tonkin incident, he had a Congress - a Democratic Congress - willing to declare war, but he asked for less. Why? Because he didn’t want to distract too much from the great society. So, we did not commit, and a half-assed committment by America was not enough to defeat the enemy. We lost 55,000 lives and 300,000 limbs in vain, and were humiliated. The image of the Americans fleeing from the rooftops in Saigon is the consequence of the decision to not go to war properly.
I lay the blame for the Beirut incident at the feet of Reagan. If you are going to send men into battle, send them in armed and allow them to fight. Or don’t go at all.
I blame Bush 41 AND Clinton for the Somalia fiasco. We went in with overwhelming force. We COULD HAVE eliminated the warlords at once. We CHOSE not to. Then we changed our mind, got ill-equipped soldiers and airmen shot up, and retreated precipitously. It was an abject performance. In every case, it would have been better never to have gone into Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Beirut and Somalia rather than to go in and fail to achieve victory, or outright lose.

And I lay the blame for the slow march into the night in Iraq at the feet of Bush. He had the advantage of 20/20 hindsight. He had the advantage of advisors who ought to have studied these things. He CHOSE to imitate LBJ instead of FDR. And we - especially our soldiers - are bearing the consequences of that now.

You said that it is important to separate the military from the political. I profoundly and utterly disagree, with every fiber of my being. War IS politics. It is declared by politicians and commanded by politicians, with a political objective as its purpose. Politics starts wars, and politics ends wars. Whenever we have committed completely, totally to wars politically, we have won. Whenever we have not committed politically, it is political collapse that precipitates defeat on the battlefield.
I will not go so far as to say that “police actions” are unconstitutional. They are within the range of things the Congress can authorize. What I will say is that they are politically stupid. If something that is going to get Americans killed in battle is not sufficiently important for Congress to pronounce the formal solemnity: “America declares war...” then we should not be going to war at all.
If the political will does not exist at the outset to get the full declaration, then it will only get worse as the war drags on (which any substantial limited war against a large enemy will), and it will be political collapse that precipitates the loss of the war. We have been through the same thing over and over and over again since 1945, and 9/11 was a more massive and devastating event than even Pearl Harbor. Bush should have asked for a full DoW. He didn’t, and now we face the consequences. You say that the political collapse will be the fault of the Democrats. And that will certainly be partly true. But Bush set us up for it, quite predictably (I was disconsolate in late September, 2001, when it became clear America would NOT formally declare war). He is the Commander-in-Chief. HE took the choice to not go to war, but to resort to police action and call it war. Given history, he should have known better. I have known better all along. Why didn’t he?

As far as your comments about the different nature of our enemy go, I am ignoring nothing. I recognize all of these things about our enemy, and as such, I recognize that the greater latitude for violence and the use of heavy weapons against populations in a declared, full-on-war, is more effective at thinning out enemy populations than the limited war approach we have taken.

AS to your final comment, you have it completely wrong. Precisely because I will not go to war unless Congress inextricably commits itself and the country to war by formally and unequivocally declaring it, as leader I cannot be “led around by the nose” from one thing to the next. If the country won’t support the war at the outset enough to call it a war legally, with all those consequences, then I know with a high degree of certitude that I damn the country to defeat and disgrace if I go to war anyway, in some sort of half-assed way. Only if a foreign power does something so egregious that Congress itself will declare war will I be sending troops into extended combat abroad, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq. I am not going to pretend, as the Constitution Party does, that the Constitution REQUIRES a formal DoW for the President to send troops into major battle. It does not. But to go to an extended war without a DoW is to court very likely defeat.

And finally, this bit: “So, yes, you make some moving arguments and you have the fire of a fighter, but you really like the idea of ignoring what everyone else thinks. That’s one of the surest marks of a totalitarian dictator.”
This is the strangest remark of all. It is intended as a sneering insult. The problem with it is that it runs directly contrary to the entire thrust of my strategic view, which is that YOU DO NOT GO TO WAR AT ALL unless you get the full, solemn committment of Congress to formally declare the war, which is the very opposite of the idea of “ignoring what everyone else thinks”. It is, in fact, declaring the consensus of a society that it is a time to fight. With that declaration, the laws change, and American society has, over the course of its history, developed highly effective precedents for suppressing internal anti-war agitation during declared wars. Those precedents are all available, in our precedent-driven system, IF we undertake the formal step of getting full assent and committment to war.

If we don’t, we lose.
We didn’t for the War on Terror, and we are losing in Iraq.
You say we’re winning because we win all the battles. The “battles” are skirmishes with irregulars.
The decisive pivot is not those battles, it’s the political battlefield of Congress. With a DoW, you sieze that high ground before you start the war. Without one, you leave that ground open, because you’re afraid you can’t take it at the start. And it only gets harder as the war goes on, until finally it is from that ground that your own domestic political opponents defeat you.

America wins all of its declared wars.
I loses all of its undeclared major wars.
There is nothing hard about it.
We screwed the pooch in September, 2001.
Now we can’t win a resounding victory.
We can still hold off ignominious retreat, but to do it we have to arm the Iraqis so THEY can step up and do all the fighting.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

those dunderheads who still believe in God and morality and fairness and decency and all those other outmoded concepts.

My name is sionnsar and I am a dunderhead.

My name is Slings and Arrows, and I am a dunderhead.

My name is Harmless Teddy Bear and I am a dunderhead...

[Warhammer]

My name is Warhammer and I am a dunderhead.

[schlockandflaws]

You said: "Have you noticed that America has the highest standard of living in the whole world? ...and that it's increasing? I'd say that the proof is in the pudding. American capitalism and free trade work." You also said "You can't just throw out B.S. like that without something to back it up." Practice what you preach.

From Wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/7yymv:

On comprehensive measures such as the UN Human Development Index the United States is always in the top ten, currently ranking number eight. Scandinavian countries, Ireland, Belgium, Canada, Australia, and (until recently) Japan; Canada and Norway have alternately held the top spot for some time. On the Human Poverty Index the United States ranked 16th, one rank below the United Kingdom and one rank above Ireland.[4] On the Economist's quality-of-life index the United States ranked 13, in between Finland and Canada, scoring 7.6 out of a possible 10. The highest given score of 8.3 was applied to Ireland. This particular index takes into account a variety of socio-economic variables ranging from GDP per capita and life expectancy to political stability and unemployment.[5]

[Old Student]

“My name is sionnsar and I am a dunderhead.”

Yo Soy un Dunderhead.

[MrNatural]

BTTT

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Bookmark - O.S.C. Essay.