Too many Washington rules tied the hands of our military.
Too many Washington rules tied the hands of our military.
You're entirely correct, b4its2late, and the problem you've identified goes hand in hand with the other huge mistake we made in the Viet Nam War: there's no way the United States could win a land war in Asia.
We haven't actually won a war since World War II, which—not at all coincidentally—was the last war we fought without political micro-management. In spite of his numerous failings, I believe Franklin Roosevelt came up with enough sense to let the generals and admirals take and remain in command of World War II. Since then, presidents and members of Congress have insisted on sticking their big, often profoundly ignorant noses into military concerns. The results have ranged between unhappy and disastrous.
Ultimately, everyone concerned seems to have overlooked a fact that ought to be obvious to everyone: land wars in Asia are different from those in Europe. Europe is a small place with a limited number of people, most of whom aren't deeply suicidal. Distances are greater in Asia: in the first place, it's farther from the United States, and in the second, both the fields of battle and the participating countries themselves are larger and farther apart. I have a hunch the degree of difficulty is dependent not on the distances involved, but the square of the distances. Yes, we did beat imperial Japan, but we did so first at sea, then from the air with a grand total of two bombs; apart from bitterly and bloodily contested islands, we didn't beat Japan on land. Yes, the distances were considerably greater than those in Europe, but we had the advantages of both raw materials and manufacturing superiority, so we dealt with the distances problem more effectively than Japan.
The lesson we ought to have learned from the Korean War was simple as simple could be: there are an awful lot more Asians who are ready, willing, and able to die for their countries than Americans; further, they're fighting on their home ground rather than halfway around the world; still further, many of them have been nationalists as well as communists, which is to say: patriots fighting for their countries the same way we'd fight for ours. If you don't have uncounted millions of lives to sacrifice, it's probably a bad idea to try to fight land wars against countries that do. More than one or two land wars in Asia have been fought by guerrillas. No, the guerrillas don't necessarily win; they do, however, tend to have both strategic and tactical advantages from the outset, and many guerillas are fanatics of one kind or a dozen others, which gives them a psychological advantage.
If I'd been in George W. Bush's shoes on September 11, 2001, I'd have told the Air Force or the Navy I wanted Medina nuked within six hours. I'd have gone on television to issue an ultimatum to all the Islamic states known to support jihad: you've got 24 hours to sign and return the unconditional surrenders I've just faxed you, or Mecca is next. If even one jihad state fails to surrender, there won't be a Mecca any more. I'd have accepted surrenders, nuked Mecca as needed, and issued constitutions exactly as we issued them to Germany and Japan at the end of World War II. How much international trouble has either Germany or Japan caused since 1945? That's exactly how much trouble there'd be in the Middle East today if cranky old Standing Wolf had been in charge: none.
What we've seen instead has been a twelve-year military failure just like the Viet Nam War, except larger and longer and more expensive, though less expensive in terms of the number of American lives squandered for naught. People who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it.