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Articles
Fight Like The Old America
by Jason Kelly
11/03/2001
Little
did we know when President Bush cautioned that the war on
terrorism would take years that it would be due to ineptitude.
We are off to an embarrassing start that makes me think this
might end as stupidly as the Gulf War ended.
Shortly
after September 11, the media rallied around America's leaders
and crowed about how we had the right people in power. Colin
Powell led the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War and
is widely admired for an accomplished military career. Dick
Cheney was Secretary of Defense under the first President
Bush and oversaw the military activity of the Gulf War. President
George W. Bush comes from a family line that has in its history
governed not just the country, but also the CIA, among other
presumably qualifying political duties.
Yet,
if this lineup performed so well in the Gulf War, why are
we right back where we started? Actually, we're behind where
we started. At least during the Gulf War, we hadn't lost 5,000
civilians and the seat of American finance. The Gulf War was
over in an eyeblink with barely an American soldier lost.
That, in the eyes of our increasingly spineless nation, meant
victory.
From
my reading of military history, victory is defined as the
successful achievement of the goal. Did we achieve our goal
in the Gulf War? Absolutely not. Saddam Hussein is still in
power and thought by many to be as much a force in the current
anti-U.S. terrorist movement as Osama bin Laden.
Looking
back at Gulf War news reports reveals a path eerily parallel
to current stories. In 1990-1991:
- The
U.S. sought an international coalition to avoid angering
Muslims worldwide.
- Israel
warned the U.S. of continued terrorism if the threat was
not stamped out completely.
- The
U.S. launched an air campaign to neutralize the enemy and
lessen ground troop casualties.
- The
Delta force went into Iraq to seek out Scud missiles.
- The
American public's support of the war waned as weeks of bombing
and missile firing seemed more like a video game than a
real war.
Questions
haunted editorials then as they do now. Where are our soldiers?
Where is Hussein? Why can't we get him? Swap "Bin Laden" for
"Hussein" and you could run the same copy again.
Then
the Gulf War ended, and about that suddenly. Our troops hit
the ground, the Iraqis surrendered, and we had parades. General
Norman Schwartzkopf was idolized, Powell was idolized, Cheney
was idolized, and then Bush lost reelection to a philanderer
from Arkansas.
Now,
we're being told, the right people are in power.
Really?
They're largely the same people we had last time and we seem
headed toward the same result. If we let Bin Laden escape,
allow Hussein to stay in power, continue to ignore Qadhafi,
and once again leave Israel in a diplomatic wasteland as it
manages the only military strategy that has ever proved successful
against terrorism, this will be a long-term war indeed. In
fact, it will go on forever.
We need
to fight this war the way our grandparents would have fought
it. Their America would have risen to the occasion. I'm talking
about America before entertainment meant screaming idiots
on TV, before guns were considered the cause of crime, before
crime itself became televised entertainment, before celebrities
used their stature to take potshots on the country that awarded
them their glamour. Bob Hope flew to the front lines to entertain
troops. Drew Barrymore won't even fly to New York.
Enough
political correctness. Enough fretting over potential body
bags. Enough concern about whether we're going to anger other
Muslim countries and cause a retaliation against America.
It's
enough to make you scratch your head and ask, "Weren't THEY
the ones who attacked us out of the clear blue one Tuesday
morning? I thought WE were retaliating."
No, no.
We are now attacking them, the liberals argue, and we need
to be careful not to incite a retaliation.
Dammit,
if we're going to war, let's go to WAR! If it's worth fighting,
it's worth winning decisively so we don't have to fight this
war again. Let's land soldiers with rifles, roll tanks, shoot
people, get shot, unseat enemy leaders, execute war criminals,
mourn our dead, honor our heroes, and prevent the situation
from getting out of hand again.
I dare
any nation on this planet to "retaliate" against a United
States in full battle array. We feel vulnerable now because
our leaders are acting vulnerable. We are not vulnerable.
We have overcome far greater in our history against far more
formidable opponents. In this war, we have not buried 23,000
men as we did after the one-day battle of Antietam during
the Civil War. We have not lost half of the Pacific Fleet
as we did at Pearl Harbor. We have not suffered 10,000 Allied
force casualties as we did on D-Day. In each of those three
wartime moments in our history, we kept fighting and we won.
War is
not pretty. People die. Nations get angry. Wars are not fought
and won Nintendo-style. They are not fought and won by blowing
up empty buildings. They are fought with a combination of
ground troops and technology. Not one without the other.
Steel
your courage, America. Stand strong, leaders. If this is a
real war and we want to win this time, then let's get on with
it the way our grandparents would have done.
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