This from CaliforniaConservative: Great Article.
Can America ever win another war?
Wars are not won on the battlefield. They are won or lost by the will and resolve of the people of the countries who fight them. Unfortunately the U.S. has been so manipulated by the leftist media and by communist organizations, such as International ANSWER and Code Pink, that it has lost its will and resolve to defend itself, and to win wars.
American has a 60 year record of failing to prevail against strategically significant enemies. Our last victory was World War II.
In 1951 we went to Korea to stop the spread of communism. We left after three years because we lost interest and our will to win. We entered into a truce that today has possible nuclear consequences for this country.
10 years later we went to Vietnam for the same cause – stop the advance of communism, only to withdraw unbeaten, but certainly unvictorious, after 10 years. America simply lost the will to prevail. Millions of innocent Vietnamese were killed in the carnage that followed our exit.
We did vigorously rebound and we demonstrated renewed prowess in the First Gulf War, however, we did not have a decisive victory.
As we now see that Congress is ready to give up once again, it is not unreasonable to ask: Are Americans capable of winning real wars?
Some moderate successes, like Grenada and Panama have been offset by frustration in Kosovo and Somalia. Each conflict was similar. Despite superior materiel, tactics and supplies, we did not have the emotional will to endure battle. War is an unpleasant business.
It wasn’t always so. The Revolutionary War lasted 8 years (1775-1783). George Washington lost every battle except for the last one, yet the Revolutionaries continued the battle, with the support of the colonists, until they won. The will and strength of the American armed forces in the first World War are legendary, as is the unified support of the American people for their men in uniform during both World Wars.
The American Army spent December 1944 resisting a surprise German thrust into its lines – The Battle of the Bulge. Hundreds of thousands of American GI’s spent weeks of freezing nights in a Belgian forest, sleeping in foxholes dug in the snow. Cut off from their supply lines, many lacked coats and even socks. But, knowing that the Nazis were just yards away, most were satisfied with cold, watery soup as long as they got bullets for their rifles. These American soldiers, our “greatest generation,” held on tenaciously, despite suffering 19,000 lives in that battle. They went on to save millions in concentration camps despite enduring much worse conditions in the field than our forces in Iraq today.
What changed in America? Why don’t we have the “stomach” for a fight? This lack of commitment is evidenced in the resistance to an obvious need for a greater force in Iraq. It is displayed in the congressional games that focus on appeasement, surrender and withdrawal for political reasons regardless of the cost to America and the West. It is reflected in citizens of the U.S. who find three deaths per day repulsive, while ignorant that the freedoms they enjoy were won in battles with casualty reports that rounded off daily deaths to the nearest thousand.
That may be the problem. Americans, who have forgotten the pain and shock of 9-11, have also forgotten that once there was no America, and that its birth came at a price. And that the preservation of America and all that it stands for has also come at a price.
General Douglas MacArthur made this profound statement to the cadets at West Point, “Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed.”
Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
We have to strengthen and re-toughen the calluses that our ancestors developed while building this nation. We have to not succumb to the requests for surrender and appeasement that the media, and the Left, want us to accept.
Our enemies are ruthless and committed. If we don’t learn how to fight – and win, we will soon be reminded of that.