I agree with this. If "the fate of Western civilization is at stake!", as I'm reminded by various messages here on FR, then gear up like it, while also showing the appropriate abhorrence of war that helps make it short and overwhelmingly decisive. Otherwise it comes off as hyperbole - the sort of "go team!" sentiment that fades quickly when things turn sour, or the "phone me at the mall and tell me how the game went" non-chalance that does not put steel in the spine of folks who will need to carry water for the battle.
Honest question. Not baiting at all. Do you believe it to be the fact?
I agree with most of that, except the part that asserts that wars must be short and “decisive.” It doesn’t necessarily work that way. I defer to no one in my appreciation of Grant’s generalship, but he well knew before Appomattox that if Lee’s army escaped him and, worse, scattered into the hills, as it well might have, then it would have turned into years of guerilla warfare, conducted by men willing to continue the fight. Lee’s great prestige allowed him to surrender his army intact and to disarm it. Grant’s decision to parole it, kept it disarmed.