Posted on 12/19/2018 4:40:16 PM PST by Forgotten Amendments
The lesson thus learned is obvious for anyone debating the rationale for increased American deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria—where America’s industrial might is checked by the sheer enormity of the geography and overwhelming numbers and munitions have little effect on the enemy. Indeed, MacArthur, Kennedy, and Eisenhower, the acknowledged leaders of “the greatest generation,” would look skeptically on a foreign policy that features endless and costly wars in faraway lands. It is not simply that if these men were alive today they would withdraw America’s military from the Middle East; had they been alive and in a position to do so, they would not have deployed them to begin with. But even if they had—to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, for example—the deployment would have been Shermanesque: short, but overwhelmingly violent.
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanconservative.com ...
The real problem is politicians unwilling to win a war. If you go to war it is the last choice. You’re objective should be change the culture of the enemy state. No tactic, strategy or weapon should be off the table. It is a do or die. If that is not the situation then war is not the correct option. All in or all out. WAR IS THE FIANAL ANSWER 100% OR DONT GO TO WAR! WAR is life or death period.
Manchesters book on MacArthur didn’t really pin him on his lack of preparedness regarding the attack on the Phillipines. 8 hour heads up. Saturday night. All the pilots were partying. He screwed up.
Consider how we fought WW2. We incinerated entire cities. Not just Hiroshima. We leveled cities in Japan and Germany. Men, women, children, babies, killed by the tens of thousands.
If we conducted the war on terror like that, we would not only declared open season on everyone connected with Osama, including members of the Saudi royal family, we would have gone after Pakistan too.
God bless Patrick Buchanan for founding The American Conservative magazine.
It’s counterpoint to CR and Bill Kristol’s failed rag.
Paleoconservative mind candy.
I’ve recently read a couple of books about WWII.
I was amazed at some of the things that happened in the China/Burma/India Theater.
I see the French loss at Dien Bien Phu traced directly back to the Allied victories in Burma and the South Pacific.
The English Soldiers in Burma and the American Soldiers in the South Pacific were successfully transported and supplied and supported by American AirPower.
Why wouldn’t the French think they could successfully use their AirPower do the same thing in Vietnam?
France’s defeat in Vietnam led to many problems.
Thanks for posting this great oped.
Excellent article.
The two most momentous moments in 20th century world history occured in Sarajevo in 1914 and in Dallas in 1963.
The first assassination event destroyed a gentile world, and in the wake of its previously unimaginable carnage birthed the Bolshevik monster, and sowed the seeds of future Nazi horror... 150 million (at least) died during the 20th century at the hands of their fellow men as a direct result ...
The second assassination event doomed the United States to a slow decline. It was the horror of Dallas in November 1963 that gave the nation Lyndon Baines Johnson, one of its absolute worst presidents and worst men to ever hold the office ... he gave us the Vietnam war and all that begat; and the artificially inflated, radicalized, Democrat Congressional majorities post-1964 (courtesy of the JFK “sympathy vote”) begat the not-so “Great Society”, and the Immigration Act of 1965, which will be written of a thousand years hence as the moment when The USA gave up on controlling its own destiny .... and started its slow and inexorable decline ...
JFK was not a great president - but he WAS the last Democrat national political figure who understood - and championed - capitalism, and his reticence in getting the US involved on the ground in Asia may have fundamentally changed our history for the better had he lived ...
MacArthur was a true patriot. I was not intimately familiar with this late chapter in his long life story, but I salute his memory doubly as a result.
I am probably one of MacArthur’s biggest fans, but he could be wrong on things.
As has been stated, he let his air power get caught on the ground on the Philippines. He got run out of the Philippines. He was surprised by the Chinese in Korea.
The fact of the matter as concerns American involvement in Vietnam is this:
We’re still here and the steamrolling Soviet Union is gone.
Yeah, Vietnam was ugly and there were a lot of screwups, but we are still here and the steamrolling Soviet Union is gone.
The only way to go to war under the constitution is for congress to file an act of declaration. Last one was Dec 8, 1941.
I’d say Hiroshima 1945 has a fair claim, as does Kitty Hawk 1903.
Fianal answer not withstanding, you are right.
This evening, at dinner, I said to my wife, concerning the withdrawal just announced, “what ever happened to the policy of “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER?
Don’t shed another drop of blood dealing with the muslim hordes. Kill them until there are none left to read the book that inspires them to commit evil deeds on all they have contact with.
I’ll sign up immediately if I can help fight the war. Dropping a few big bombs would “make my day!”
PS, We old farts have nothing to lose and a lot of fight left to bring to the front.
You are spot on. If what you propose is not done, we WILL be conquered. Look to the U.K. where they know citizens are unarmed AND NOW the police don’t even bother to show up. IN LONDON! Are the criminals muslim? Increasingly they are, and it is deliberately not reported. The people are being sabotaged by their own government.
Burglars now so brazen they don’t even wait until you’ve left home: With police nowhere to be seen, more and more victims are having terrifying encounters with intruders
In my mind, it is like somebody setting a fine crystal goblet on the edge of a table when a train is about to pass by the house. Anybody with any sense could foresee the inevitable result of the goblet ending up shattered on the floor, but who do you blame? The person that served the goblet? The person who set it on the edge of the table? The train operator? The goblet maker for not using a sturdier material? I'm not sure WWI came about from one singular, precipitating event, although that one event was undeniably a key link in the chain of events.
MacArthur let his ego lead the way, too many times.
A brilliant planner and strategist, but repeatedly ignored intel that did not meet his preconceived notions.
“Change the culture of the enemy state”?
Sounds a tad ambitious.
Apples and oranges.
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