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Hippies and Media Elitists Whine and we Lose Wars

By Jeff “Mario” Smith, Guerilla Reporter

December 4, in the year of our Lord 2006

As a Veteran, and a lowly enlisted man at that, I have, for years, stated that the only way to win a war is to fight it. You can’t fight a war in a politically correct fashion and win. It simply doesn’t work that way.

I have often said that World War 2 was the last war we totally won, and here is how we won it. We didn’t only kill Nazis with swastikas and Japs with swords, and all of their allies. No, we killed their women and children also. Then and only then, did the Nazis and Japs give up! Read some in depth history of WWII and prove me wrong.

It is an ugly thing to say, but war is the ugliest thing that man does. It shouldn’t be approached like a weekend Boy Scout Jamboree that we enjoy and wish to engage in often. It should be approached as the ugliest part of international relations and used only when nothing will stop an evil aggressor, like the leaders of North Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nazi Germany, Japan, and several others who were allowed to continue their evil pursuits and never made the list.

We allowed the communist controlled United Nations in the Korean War to stop us from advancing North and totally freeing that nation from the clutches of the evil atheist communists. Our top general at that time lost his job over it. He was right. As a matter of fact, the Korean War might never had happened had General Patton been allowed to implement his plan, which was to keep going to rid the world of more evil dictators. Likewise with the Vietnam War.

In Vietnam, our own political leadership would not allow us to win. For all the whining that the anti-war peace hippies did about the bombing of North Vietnam, we weren’t even allowed to bomb the Soviet and Chinese ships in Haiphong Harbor where most of the Chinese and Russian weaponry was coming in to North Vietnam, weaponry used to kill or injure many or our troops, and civilians as well. That’s right, and contrary to what Hanoi Jane said, the communists murdered, and continue to murder today, civilians. And contrary to what John “Ho Chi” Kerry said, our troops do not murder innocents, with the exception of a couple of isolated incidents, which is the opposite of how communists wage war. When communists do not murder civilians, it is the exception to the rule.

We defeated the NVA in Tet of 68, but our leadership would not allow us to move north to capture the enemy’s land. Instead, they allowed the propaganda of Walter Cronkite to sway American public opinion in such a way as to cause us to abandon our friends in the south of Vietnam to a murderous totalitarian communist regime, and many of our own troops as well, our Vietnam POW/MIA. Although the media won’t report it, Montagnards and others are being murdered still today in Vietnam, a nation our leaders want us to welcome onto the world stage of ”free trade”.

Armchair generals are whining about Iraq and Afghanistan and how these wars are being conducted, totally ignoring history. It is a lose-lose situation for our leadership to ever engage in war. It is so bad, that the current anti-war movement of 60’s peace-hippie wannabes and their friends in the media and on college and university campuses are playing from the exact same playbook they used to lose the Vietnam War for us and nobody seems to see it.

Oh, if I were in charge! The Middle East turmoil would be over except for the rebuilding. That’s what you do in war. You decimate the enemy and their allies and then rebuild them in your image. The stability the world gains after waging war to win is priceless. Unfortunately, our present entertainment-drunken society has no interest in protecting our way of life. Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.

The following is a commentary from ex-POW Major Mark Smith (Ret), and he included some other comments and a very insightful article by Larry Kahaner, author of “AK-47:  The Weapon that Changed the Face of War”. One more thing - if I were in charge, Major Smith would be my Secretary of Defense.

Mark Smith’s Commentary…

We do not seem to ever get it, except for the few voices "crying in the wilderness." What we never prepare for is the "David and Goliath syndrome." This says that the majority of the people will support the "little guy" no matter how evil, based on a convoluted set of ethics not taking into account what he can do with a box cutter or suitcase full of evil.

We seem ready to accept what was a very foreign thing prior to 1949: to lose. So distasteful is winning at any cost these days, we allow the kid who strikes out to hit off a tee. The dumbest SOB who ever lived was the guy who said: "Winning isn't everything." It is if you are an Army or a country.

Once you show you will accept defeat, an enemy need only hold on long enough to assure you will quit. This led to the much heralded "Colin Powell Theory of War." You hear it all the time: "Only fight for short duration with overwhelming force."  That is fine if you are allowed to pick your enemies and wars to be fought.

We were attacked and our citizenry demanded blood and they got it. But, we have a whole segment of society which abhors anything except some UN sponsored dog and pony show. The biggest mistake of this war was going to the UN to start with. One simple statement would have handled it: "We were attacked and it is our intent to slay all those who were involved, support them or even agree with them--END OF DISCUSSION."

What we need after our Vietnam "cut and run" act is to regain respect by toeing the line and prove we will never quit again. How anyone could be proud of quitting amazes me. But, we have them and they do include some sorry excuses for military men.

Major Mark Smith (Ret)

Ex-POW, Vietnam (SF)

Billy wrote:

The article by Andrew J. McCarthy - as I view its meaning and importance - was / is absolutely the best article announcing the Facts of the US Political dilemma. Another fine article by AJM is found at the site listed directly below.

(http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200506290912.asp)
 
Why the U.S. Loses Small Wars
By Larry  Kahaner
 
Mr. Kahaner is the author of “AK-47:  The Weapon that Changed the Face of War”,
Wiley & Sons, November, 2006. (http://www.ak-47book.com/) 
 
If history is any gauge, the US will lose the current conflict in Iraq. Since the end of World War II, major US use of force against substantially weaker enemies? Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, for example have ended poorly. The last remaining superpower is not alone in this phenomenon of strong armies losing to lesser foes: the American colonists beat the British, the Vietnamese forced France to leave Indochina and Afghanistan’s
Mujahadeen drove the Soviets from their country.
 
 Why do powerful armies lose against decidedly weaker enemies, and what does it say about the US involvement in Iraq?
 
The answer lies in the study of small wars. At its simplest, a small war is one in which the relationship between the combatants is decidedly unbalanced. One side is not only militarily superior in size but its weapons are state of the art. Some call this Asymmetric Warfare or Fourth Generation Warfare, or the more familiar guerilla warfare, from the Spanish for small war.
 
While the larger force relies on high-tech weaponry and sophisticated air power, contemporary small forces use simple, durable and easy-to-use and obtain weapons, mainly the venerable AK-47 rifle backed up by Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Despite reports of dramatic explosions, the ubiquitous and cheap AK-47 still kills more people in Iraq than any other weapon. 
 
While trying to understand how to win in Iraq, US military scholars are turning to the classics, and one of the hottest books making the rounds is, surprisingly, over a century old. Small Wars was written in 1896 by C.E. Callwell, a colonel in the British army, for British officers posted to Africa and India. It draws on his own experience in the Second Afghan and Boer Wars and claims that a powerful force can easily lose, if it doesn’t fully understand the enemy, fails to describe clear objectives or, worst of all, pursues military objectives that do not contribute to the conflict's political goal.

He notes that the primary object in a small war is to force insurgents to fight on the regular force’s terms by drawing them into conflicts in which their superior firepower and discipline could prevail. Unfortunately, the history of small wars has shown that insurgents play hit and run striking boldly and then retreating quickly, and rarely engaging the larger force head on.
 
 The other, and much bigger obstacle to winning small wars, brings a moral dilemma.  According to Callwell, to win small wars, mere victory isn’t enough, the enemy must be thoroughly and utterly destroyed to the last man, woman, and child which means enormous civilian casualties. For citizens of most modern democracies, this is an unacceptable stance.

 

The level of violence and barbarism it would take to beat an insurgent force -- torture, wholesale executions, leveling of towns -- is a place where most democracies refuse to go. This keeps victory out of reach.
 
Small wars are also lost because of the larger army’s lack of national commitment which ends in inadequate or misspent funds and deployment of too few troops. For insurgents fighting for their own soil, the commitment is 100 percent. If they lose the war they lose everything.

 

Without skin in the game national commitment by the larger force’s country usually wanes.
http://www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/sw_manual.asp

http://www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/images/SWM_Red.gif

 

If Callwell got military scholars to think more clearly about small wars, a group of Marine Corps officers in the 1930s took it to the next level with production of the Small Wars Manual based on US experiences in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.

 

While building on Callwell’s work, this landmark book published in 1940, points to what some say is one of the most important aspects of winning small wars - understanding the role of indigenous religion, ideology and tribal relationships. The manual not only talks about the military aspects of winning small wars, and yes they can be  brutal, but of more importance is a deep understanding of a society’s language,  culture, religion, history, economic structures, and mores.

The manual is a hot seller from a much-clicked website. The Small Wars Center of Excellence,  http://www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/index.asp run by the Marine Corps, advocates the use of simpler weapons and more complex soldiers in small wars, the opposite of  current conventional wisdom. This is not the only take-away message from the manual, but it is a vital one.
 
Unfortunately the Defense Department’s upper echelon is heading in the wrong direction. The proposed $200 billion Future Combat Systems is a mélange of expensive and complex high tech weapons that will be less effective in winning future small wars than thousands more soldiers with language skills, armed with durable rifles, who understand history, foreign culture, religion local customs and guerilla warfare.
 
The soldiers in Iraq understand this. Now it’s time for Pentagon planners to read and heed the classics. It’s not too late to win the small war in Iraq, but the lessons of history must not be ignored.
 

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