When War Becomes Academic

Afghanistan is already in the rearview mirror.  The news cycle has clearly left it behind.  This is unfortunate. With respect to War, peace and our position on the Global Stage, I’m not convinced that we’ve internalized the many lessons as befitting a global power.  

From my seat in the gallery, I see variations of three choices confronting the United States:

1. Keep The Status Quo.

Deploy our troops overseas in response to anti-Western aggression and continue to take half-measures.  Piss off the people we deploy because we simply refuse to do what is required to finish the job.  Piss off the taxpayers at home for sending them in the first place.  Keep believing.  Keep believing that somehow people on the other side of the globe will have a collective epiphany.  Because if we’re just nice enough, they’ll convert to Christianity, hold free and fair elections, abandon nepotism, dispense with tribalism, and adopt free markets.  [Spit].

2. Pull Back.

I’m talking everything.  Heed our Founder, George Washington.  End all foreign entanglements and never again interfere in the internal affairs of another nation.  Ever again.  I would not object to enshrining this policy into the Constitution.  Restrict the use of military force to a) invasion on our shores, b) interference with our shipping, and c) abuse of our citizens abroad.  If Citicorp and Morgan Stanley lend billions to a foreign power on the losing end of a war, tough.  The American taxpayer shouldn’t be on the hook for trillions just to recover someone else’s billions.  We tried something like that during World War I and the results have been catastrophic.  

German U-boats picking off our freight liners was not the reason we entered WWI.  Woodrow Wilson (may his racist soul suffer particular torment as he continues to burn in Hell) sent over 116,000 of our boys over to Europe to die on the ends of German bayonets, in clouds of mustard gas, and coughing up their lungs with influenza. All because the banking interests who put him in the White House also lent enormous piles of cash to the decadent governments of Europe.  If we were serious about saving American lives, our navy could have swept the Atlantic and escorted our merchant ships across without landing a single doughboy on France’s shores.

3. Do What It Takes To Win.

Be ruthless.  Don’t be squeamish.  War is a nasty, nasty business; we need to adult up and come to terms with that.  The United States has at its disposal some of the finest soldiers and warriors (not the same thing) the world has ever seen.  We still lead the world in science and innovation, and that’s in spite of the Clinton Crime Syndicate selling a plurality of our technology to the Chinese.  There is no war, no conflict the Unites States could not win inside of 30 days.  We just need the will to perform the required tasks.

Winning is Extremely Difficult.

It is also extremely simple:

1. Depopulation

No more trying to determine who is “on our side,” who can be “trusted,” or any of that nonsense.  Clear the roads, clean our every village and hamlet with an Augean thoroughness.  Every combatant is either put down like a rabid dog, or wears a chain and is handed a shovel.  All non-combatants are given the choice of either wearing the same chain or becoming a refugee. Every refugee – let me repeat that – every refugee is herded out of the nation.  Our reluctance to implement this tactic was a huge factor in our eventual defeat in Afghanistan.  If we presume that every insurgent requires at least 10 “non-combatants” to support them, then a 5% insurgent population requires at least half the population to give them shelter and sustenance.  That would require the other half to look the other way, either willingly or under duress.  Motives should make no difference.  In war everyone picks a side.  The very existence of an insurgency means that the indigenous population has sided with the enemy.  Whether actively or passively should again make no difference.  Had we adopted this policy and herded every male of fighting age through the Wakhan Corridor into China and sealed the border behind them, we would have been stronger for it.

2. Colonization

Every stretch of land on Earth has resources.  Not every government encourages developing those resources through rational self-interest and market economies.  We’ll stay with the nation of Afghanistan as it provides a current example.  Central Asia sits on an ocean of natural gas and an abundance of rare earths.  Because of our recent failures, the Chinese will step in, mine those minerals, and sell them to us in our smart phones, televisions, and tablets.  They will take Afghanistan’s fuel reserves and augment their already countless coal fired plants.  Yeah them.  Better for us to have seized control of those resources and turned them over to our own landless population.  This would have given the Western World an outpost in the heart of the Asian Continent – a counterweight to China’s incursions in Central America and The Caribbean.  

America is flush with potential entrepreneurs who just never got their $100k seed money to start their own business.  Let the next conquered nation be our nation’s next Oklahoma Land Rush.  The only ones left from the original population should be the women and children.  Allow the women to marry the new colonists that show up without wives, and let the new colonists adopt the children.  

Do not ghettoize.  This is not ancient Cana.  Let the sons and daughters of the new colonists intermarry with those of the indigenous people.  Nobody gets to live on a reservation.  If you wanted to keep your culture, your men should not have taken up arms against us.  Read the Declaration of Independence.  Read the Constitution of The United States of which you are the newest territory.  Study the Bill of Rights.  If you can’t read, we’ll have someone read it to you.  This is your new culture.

3. Christianize

First you send the Soldiers.  Then the Colonists.  Then the coup de grace. Send the Missionaries to finish the job.  Every settlement gets a Church, every Church gets a School.  Flood the new territory with Bibles.  With Christianity comes education, science, indoor plumbing, William-Sonoma, and eventually – to quote Ann Coulter – “night skiing.”  Let the little children come unto Jesus.  Give them the lessons of the stories of the Old and New Testaments.  Then introduce them to the Apostle Paul.  Then the ancient philosophers and historians: Socrates, Aristotle, Josephus, Tacitus, and Aurelius.  Move to the Renaissance – Descartes and Locke.  Show them the contrast between the Salvation of Liberty and the Poison of Equity.

You’re Fired.

A famous push-back meme to the management guru scams of the 1990s went as follows: “sometimes the best way to raise morale is to simply fire all the unhappy people.”  That pretty much sums up how to achieve victory.  In everything.

For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war: and in multitude of counsellers there is safety.

Proverbs 24:6

War is horror.  It rips limbs from bodies, and brings famine and disease.  War fills the world with widows and orphans, and causes unimaginable pain. Those who survive are often damaged in their minds, in their bodies, and in their very souls.  War beggars even the wealthiest nations. 

So don’t do it unless you, as a nation are willing to finish it.  And therein lies my thesis.  We as a nation don’t have the stomach for it.  We haven’t finished a war since 1945, and some historians will argue not even then.  So let us recognize this within ourselves and resolve never to carry war past our shores ever again.

At the beginning of the century, War was brought to our shores, astonishingly, and without provocation.  For a very short time, we as a nation were unified.  We appeared to possess the necessary resolve.   In response, we rolled into Afghanistan (and later Iraq) with plenty of shock and awe and introduced ourselves as the new noisy neighbors.  Twenty years later, can anyone point to what we accomplished?  I sure can’t.  Because – say it with me – we didn’t finish the job.

Selah.