You can’t support a war anymore and expect it to be fought right. It just gets worse with each war we are involved in, and it’s why we haven’t had a decisive victory in a war since WW2, which also was against a much more powerful enemy than any we have faced since. Even though we have such a well trained military force with the most advanced weapons the world has ever seen they are not allowed to win wars any longer. We don’t have what it takes to fight a total war that we are willing to win at all cost any longer, and we have shown time and time again that it’s impossible to fight the way we want to fantasize war is fought and still win. If we aren’t willing to fight a total war then it’s a war we don’t find important enough to be fighting in the first place. We either need to stop getting involved in wars or start fighting them the way history has shown they should be fought to win. That involves a lot of brutal realities that come with any war, no matter how necessary they are, and we need to accept that or accept that we don’t have what it takes as a people to win wars anymore. Trying to make war something that it isn’t, and refusing to ever accept the obvious truth of it, is exactly why we can’t win them anymore.
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war.
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
Regardless of your personal opinion of Sherman he is quoting the obvious truth of war, and our history has shown us the consequences of trying to change it into something that’s not quite as ugly as it is in reality has done to our success at victory.
We shouldn’t be having 10+ year wars with nations like Iraq and Afghanistan. They should have never happened, or have been over with during the Bush administration as they could have been. Instead we try nation building, and give civilian lives so much thought that it prevents us from ever having a chance. I imagine the leaders we had in WW2 would have liked to trade their enemy to those we face today who pose no threat to an unleashed U.S. military. We have the best trained and equipped troops on earth, but they are hampered and forced to give their lives fighting ridiculous strategies for things like propping up a government in Afghanistan that literally allows in it’s constitution the right to murder those who convert from Islam. I somehow doubt we would have allowed that in the past, or allowed Japan to do something like that after the war. We not only try and nation build which our military isn’t trained or meant to do, but we can’t even build a nation friendly toward us.
“Even though we have such a well trained military force with the most advanced weapons the world has ever seen they are not allowed to win wars any longer. We don’t have what it takes to fight a total war that we are willing to win at all cost any longer, and we have shown time and time again that...”
Your points are all well-taken, but...
You are overlooking the reality that the “United States” that won World War II simply doesn’t exist any more, nor will it ever exist again.
The USA “of then” was a culturally (and ethnically) unified nation with common and traditional values. When threatened, a nation so unified was able to find within the common purpose and intestinal fortitude necessary to support the level of human and economic sacrifice necessary that made “total war” possible, and total victory achievable.
Look around TODAY. That unity no longer exists. Indeed, the country is reaching a level of internal “division” nearly as acute as existed in the 1850’s.
Victory against a “common enemy” isn’t possible in a nation that no longer has “common bonds”. Whatever bonds that held “the old America” together seem to be dissolving. I daresay the worst conflict we may experience in the future may be of a civil/ethnic nature — an internal war.