No More No-Win Wars

It’s time to end America’s dismal record of fighting conflicts it lacks the will to win. 

by Guest Authors Mar 30, 2024  @ Liberty Nation News |Tags: Articles, Good Reads, Military Affairs, Opinion 

(Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

By James C. Roberts

Editor’s Note: In honor of yesterday’s National Vietnam War Veterans Day, we present this article by a veteran of that conflict.

A mantra heard often in conservative circles these days is “No more endless wars.” News flash: All the wars alluded to ended – usually in American defeat or the withdrawal of American forces before the mission was completed.

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

This baleful trend began with the Vietnam War. As a Vietnam veteran myself, I am still deeply troubled by the carnage occasioned by that long and bloody conflict.

Ronald Reagan called the Vietnam War a “noble cause,” and so it was. The objective of the American commitment was to preserve an independent South Vietnam, which was under assault by the North Vietnamese, whose forces had unlimited support from the Soviet Union and Communist China. Put in context, the Vietnam conflict was a “hot” war in a larger worldwide “cold” war against communist aggression led by the Soviet Union.

Facing a presidential election in 1964, and desirous of keeping the American commitment to the war on the front pages, President Lyndon Johnson opted for a policy of gradual escalation, a disastrous decision (abetted by the craven acquiescence of US senior officers) that left 58,000 US troops dead, more than 200,000 wounded, and far greater losses for our South Vietnamese allies. The betrayal of South Vietnam led to a dozen countries falling to communism, the degradation of American military might and foreign policy resolution, and a widespread loss of respect for the armed forces that persisted until the election of Reagan 15 years later.

The Vietnam tragedy could have been avoided if LBJ had applied decisive military force early in the war, as Richard Nixon did in 1972 to bring North Vietnam to the peace table. Mining all of North Vietnam’s harbors and an unrestricted bombing of key North Vietnamese railroad lines, bridges, and important infrastructure facilities would likely have sufficed.

To quote Reagan again, after the American defeat in Vietnam:

“Let us tell those who fought in that war [Vietnam] that never again will we ask young men to fight, and possibly die, in a war our government is afraid to let them win.”

Unfortunately, most of Reagan’s successors, including his vice president, George H.W. Bush, didn’t adhere to that sound advice.

An Unfinished Job

When Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and threatened Saudi Arabia, President Bush put together an impressive coalition and a formidable military force of 500,000 who invaded Iraq and largely destroyed Saddam’s troops. Bush, unfortunately, declined to finish the job by pushing on to Baghdad and taking out Saddam Hussein, thus squandering the opportunity to occupy Iraq and reconstitute its armed forces and government. Instead, he allowed Saddam to remain in power and become an increasingly grave threat to the security of the region. This failure resulted in his son invading Iraq to remove the dictator – an action that seriously damaged his presidency.

When Afghanistan-based terrorist Osama bin Laden orchestrated an attack on the US. on September 11, 2001, it brought Americans together to a degree not seen since World War II. The patriotism and desire for revenge for the atrocities inflicted were white-hot. Millions of young Americans expressed a willingness to enlist in the military.

The new president, George W. Bush, could have called for a national mobilization and effectively occupied the country and destroyed the Taliban. Instead, Bush urged the public to go shopping and then pursued an incremental, piecemeal commitment of troops to Afghanistan without any goals or strategy.

Then, on March 20, 2003, Bush launched an invasion of Iraq with the objective of taking down the government of Saddam Hussein. While the goal was clear, there was no strategy regarding what to do next. Retired Army General David Petraeus recalls asking his superiors, “How does this game end?” and not getting a response.

The best explanation of America’s intended mission in Iraq came from Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Essentially, Wolfowitz predicted that, having toppled Hussein, the Iraqi people would greet US troops as liberators and then America would use revenues from oil sales to rebuild the country.

We all know how that turned out. The 150,000 troops committed were far too few to effectively secure Iraq, which led to the country dissolving into ethnic warfare. Meanwhile, American Viceroy Paul Bremer made a series of unilateral and disastrous decisions, perhaps the worst being the disbanding of the Iraqi army, leaving 500,000 young military-age males unemployed – but in possession of their weapons. Another catastrophic decision was to fire all Iraqi civil servants who had any ties, at any level, to Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party. This action effectively removed most of the government workers with administrative experience.

Meanwhile, an undermanned US military force struggled to stabilize the ethnic maelstrom that consumed Iraq.

Pacification Strategy

The 150,000 troops engaged in Iraq meant an even smaller number of troops available for the war in Afghanistan. To Bush’s credit, the troop surge that he ordered in Iraq (against tremendous opposition, even within his own party) and led by Gen. David Petraeus, had largely pacified the country by the last year of his presidency.

Barack Obama (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

Incoming president Barack Obama effectively squandered the hard-won gains achieved by the surge, however. The new president (with the full support of his vice president, Joe Biden) pulled all US troops out of Iraq, which resulted in the quick reversion back to disorder and the re-emergence of ISIS, the terror group that took control of large swaths of the country.

Petraeus presented Obama with a detailed plan for stabilizing Afghanistan and the number of troops needed to defeat the Taliban. After innumerable meetings in the White House Situation Room, Obama gave Petraeus less than half the number of troops he requested and then, incredibly, announced the date when those troops would start to withdraw.

One can imagine the Taliban leaders sitting around their campfires, laughing hysterically as they read the Obama strategy. The fruits of that plan were manifest in the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2022 – ordered and overseen by Joe Biden.

The Modern Theater

Biden appears to embody all the worst traits of presidents LBJ, both Bushes, and Obama. The Middle East and Eastern Europe are now in flames, thanks largely to Biden’s feckless malpractice.

Biden precipitated the disaster in Ukraine by showing weakness in Afghanistan and in stating that, basically, a small Russian invasion of Ukraine would not necessarily be a bad thing. When the expected invasion came, he offered to speed up Ukraine’s surrender by giving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky an armed escort out of the country. When the Ukrainians proved to be courageous and skillful fighters who halted the invasion, Biden promised assistance for “as long as it takes”, but over the past two years has delivered aid in fits and starts and denied Ukraine the advanced equipment and aircraft that could break the stalemate and defeat the Russians.

Unsurprisingly, there has been no Biden statement to the American people on strategy or goals or any explanation of how preserving an independent Ukraine is in our national interest.

Ukraine is the latest entry on the list of “endless wars,” and Biden’s terrible record on the conflict invites that description. There are important differences, however. First, Ukrainians are a people united in their love of country and have proved their willingness to fight and die for it.

Second, the country is led by a fully functional government (unlike Iraq and Afghanistan) which has the overwhelming support of the Ukrainian people. Third, the country has a well-led military whose soldiers and sailors are battle-hardened and fierce in their determination to defeat the Russian invaders.

Fourth and finally, Ukraine (unlike Iraq, Afghanistan and, initially, South Vietnam) does not require the deployment of American troops on the ground. The Ukrainians are capable and willing to do the fighting themselves. All they are asking for is equipment and ammunition.

Of all the presidents involved in the sad history of recent military conflicts, the only exception since Reagan is Donald Trump. As president, Trump employed troops sparingly, but when he did so, he acted decisively. He ordered Secretary of Defense James Mattis to destroy ISIS and ISIS was promptly destroyed. He kept the Iranian mullahs in their box by ordering the killing of Qasem Soleimani. He kept Xi Jinping in line by employing tough sanctions on China, and he fostered peace in the Middle East by negotiating the Abraham Accords.

On Ukraine, however, Trump has been mostly silent, saying only that the Russian invasion would not have happened if he had been president – probably true – and that he would settle the conflict in 24 hours, which is an absurd prediction.

A defeated Ukraine, occupied by the Russians, would be a huge problem for America. Maintaining an independent Ukraine is in America’s self-interest. Donald Trump, speaking for the Republican Party, should place the blame for the crisis in Ukraine squarely on Joe Biden. Then he should call for a strategy of victory that expels the Russians from Ukrainian territory.

Finally, the votes are there in the US House of Representatives to pass a desperately needed aid package for Ukraine. Trump might consider urging Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to enable the bill to reach the House floor.

James C. Roberts served in the Reagan Administration from 1981-1984 and is the founder and executive chairman of Radio America, a national conservative radio network with more than 630 affiliates.

 ~ All opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Liberty Nation.

Read More From Guest Authors

America Needs to Stop Being The World's Policeman!

By Rich Kozlovich 

On August 11, 2023, this article,"We Can't be the World's Policeman?" by Karen McKay was posted on America Thinker claiming someone has to police the world, and it had better be the United States versus anyone else.  Well, I think we need to discuss this as the impetus, because in my opinion, the real reason for this piece is to justify America's involvement in the Russo/Ukraine War, so let's explore this. 

America ended up with that policing "responsibility" after WWII simply because there really wasn't anyone else to keep the world's shipping lanes free of piracy, and that was all about economics, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But why did we have to police and defend Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin and South America, and the rest of the world against communism? Which dragged America into every major and petty conflict that infected humanity?  Many times unsuccessfully at the cost of a lot of America blood and money.

Let’s try and get some clarity on this. The only reason Stalin became such a world threat was because FDR was a traitor, and Stalin “fooled” Truman, which I find interesting since he was a real history buff, and as President of the United States he had to know about the Venona intercepts and how badly Stalin’s agents had infiltrated the federal government under FDR. They turned Eastern Europe over to Stalin, and that gave impetus for China to be taken over by communists, and spread that contamination worldwide.

But the economic and structural stability of the world was in such bad shape after WWII the world was like a child needing an adult hand to hold them up, and America was that adult. But at some point, that child grows up, and you’re not holding them up any longer, they’re dragging you down. We’re long past that point, and it’s time we operate under one principle and one principle only. How does any effort benefit America? But that’s the problem! Who decides if our involvement benefits America or not, and what are the parameters of that evaluation? 

All this goes back to the inappropriate involvement by America in Europe during WWI, the most dramatic event of the 20th century, because all the crises we face are a direct result of that involvement. 

We hear a lot of clabber about the the Zimmerman note and the sinking of the Lusitania, neither of which justified America’s entry into that monstrous meat grinder called WWI.   As provocative as it was, the Zimmerman Note was stupid, and there was no way Germany could lend military aid to Mexico in a war against the US and everyone in the government had to know that.  They couldn't even supply their own military properly how were they supposed to supply Mexico?

As for the Lusitania, while it was a passenger ship, an English passenger ship, it was carrying illegal cargo making it a legitimate target. The Brits knew it and there’s history that suggests the federal government knew it.  All the outrage over that was an emotional red herring played by Wilson and the newspapers.

Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare was vile, but it was a result of two things. England was blockading German ports, and the US was materially and financially working to support England, including letting Churchill, who was High Lord of the Admiralty, get away with flying American flags on British ships, all of which was designed to get Germany to sink American ships in order to inflame American outrage and join the war.   A mess Europe created for itself, a mess for which America was not responsible, and a mess for which America had no responsibility to fix.  While Germany was in no way the good guy in this mess, neither were the Brits or Wilson. This was a European problem of their own creation and America needed to stay out of it.

What would have happened if America had stayed out of that war? Europe was already facing riots and terrorist attacks from what they deemed to be anarchists, and had very real fears their governments might be overthrown. These anarchists were in fact all socialists of some brand or the other, and their outrage against these governments was having a serious impact on the people of all these nations, whose children were being slaughtered. They'd tried to wear out machine guns with young men's bodies, and they were all running out of young men. All of their economies were heading into the toilet, which according to the Guns of August, all the European powers knew any continental war lasting more than six months would bankrupt Europe.  All the European nations would have become a second class powers, and America would have emerged the most important economic powerhouse in the world.

When America entered the war that changed the entire material and demographic dynamic, and Germany knew it was done. If America hadn't entered that war, WWII might not have broken out, as historians call WWII nothing more than an aftermath of WWI.  With all the European powers bankrupt, and without the support of Europe's economy, it's most likely Lenin's economic stupidity would have collapsed communist control of Russia, preventing their support of Chinese's communists, and America would no have embarked on over 100 years of wasted American blood and money interfering in failed military enterprises worldwide, getting involved in affairs for which we had nothing to do with. 

This argument that we need to police the world because anyone else would be bad isn't a valid argument to justify wasting untold gallons of American blood and untold billions of American dollars over the last 100 years. This lack of defensive readiness referred to in the article can directly be attributed to this worldwide "policing" effort. Let the world's nations worry about policing themselves! If they don't, won't, or can't, that's their problem.  By America staying out of WWI the European powers would have had to come to a stalemate, and Europe would have had to face up to their stupidity and fix it themselves. 

We're broke, we're exhausted, and we're being destroyed by all these failed worn out leftist globalist concepts, and now Biden want's give anther 24 billion dollars to Ukraine, and since the Democrats refuse to pass legislation that requires audits for that money, who knows whose pocket all that money is going into. 

How to keep U.S. dollars at home where we need them

'Our local and national prosperity depends on it'

By Roger Simmermaker April 9, 2023 

 

The holidays are well behind us, but even though we aren't laser-focused on buying that American-made gift for family or loved ones, we should still seek to buy American whenever possible.  New York-based Oneida doesn't make silverware in America anymore (try www.libertytabletop.com), but Oneida-owned Anchor Hocking makes all their products in the USA. The company website says it all:

 

"We've been making Anchor Hocking glassware right here in the USA for more than a century. For all that time, our products have remained a staple in kitchens around the world by staying on the edge of craftsmanship and in the center of American-made quality.  "Supporting American jobs is a source of great pride for us, and it's important to our customers too. They appreciate our dedication to the workforce here at home. And abroad, 'made in the USA' means something else – quality."

 

For American-made footwear, try Origin, Shloop, Red Wing, and Footskins...........To Read More....

The Reckoning That Wasn’t

Why America Remains Trapped by False Dreams of Hegemony 

By Andrew J. Bacevich  March/April 2023 February 28, 2023

Over the course of many evenings in 1952 and 1953, when I was a kindergartner, my family gathered around a hand-me-down TV in the Chicago housing project where we lived to watch Victory at Sea. With stirring music and solemn narration, this 26-part documentary produced by NBC offered an inspiring account of World War II as a righteous conflict in which freedom had triumphed over evil, in large part thanks to the exertions of the United States. The country had waged a people’s war, fought by millions of ordinary citizens who had answered the call of duty. The war’s outcome testified to the strength of American democracy.

Here was history in all its seductive and terrible magnificence. Here, too, was truth: immediate, relevant, and compelling, albeit from a strictly American point of view. If the series had an overarching message, it was this: the outcome of this appalling conflict had inaugurated a new age in which the United States was destined to reign supreme.

The series had a profound effect on me, reinforced by the fact that both of my parents had served in the war. For them and for others of their generation, the great crusade against Germany and Japan was to remain the defining event of their lives and seemed destined to define the lives of future generations, as well...........To Read More..

My Take - The era is over.  We can no longer afford to patrol the world...for everyone else's benefit.  Before America gets involved in foreign interdiction one question must be asked.  How does this benefit America?  Involvement in this Russo/Ukrainian War does not benefit America.  None of this was our fault, nor our responsibility, and it's costing us hundreds of billion of dollars and weakening our own national defense, for a completely corrupt dictatorial government that has Joe Biden and his crime family in their pockets. 

• Economics and the Russo/Ukrainian War 
• P&D Geopolitics Edition  
• Decisions Clouded by the Fog of Misdirection, Misinformation and Ideology

Should the West Seek an Off-Ramp in Ukraine?

By Ben Shapiro | October 5, 2022

How does the war in Ukraine end?  This is precisely the question no one is supposed to ask these days. The supposition by our thought leaders seems to be that if we keep up the pressure on Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, he'll fold and go home; his threats to use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield are nothing more than saber-rattling.He will then retrench on the domestic front, resolidify his power and continue throwing his prospective enemies from third-story windows.

Perhaps that's actually the best-case scenario. Because if President Joe Biden gets his wish — if Putin is indeed ousted from power in Russia — what would follow could easily be even worse than Putin.

The Russian public remains highly supportive of aggressive foreign action to expand the "empire"; other than the military, there are no well-organized or powerful groups in Russia, and Putin does have an inner circle of possible successors who are, if anything, more anti-West even than he is. If none of those successors take the fore, the possibility of internecine warfare akin to Syria isn't totally out of the realm of possibility either — and that, in a country armed with a massive and aging nuclear arsenal.

Then there's the other possibility: that Putin is serious, and that if he sees his mission in Ukraine failing, he actually unleashes nuclear weapons. Most observers thought Putin was saber-rattling over his threats to invade Ukraine in the first place; underestimating Putin's aggressive radicalism now could be foolish.

And there are no real plans to deal with Putin unleashing a nuke: while former CIA director David Petraeus has suggested that America would respond by "leading a NATO, a collective effort, that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea," that could also lead Putin to escalate even further, perhaps even trying to directly threaten a civilian center in NATO territory with nuclear weapons.........To Read More....

Are the Globalists Winning?

We need to be hopeful and fight the good fight every day. But that doesn't mean we need to falsely believe our adversaries are on the ropes. They're winning and we need to change that.

By J.D. Rucker, August 6, 2022

There are two extremely important ideas America First patriots must keep in mind going forward when it comes to globalism spreading across the world. First, the vast majority of major problems we're facing are not coincidences or the results of incompetent decision-making by leaders. These decisions are intentional and they're working just as they're supposed to work.

Second, the globalists' plans for The Great Reset are currently on track to succeed. Far too often I read articles or hear show hosts talking about major wins by those fighting the globalist elites. They're usually minor victories at best, Pyrrhic victories at worst. A lot of times these "victories" are actually losses in disguise...................The reality is that we're in the fight of our lives on the political, cultural, economic, and religious fronts. Never has any living American faced this type of adversity coming from multiple fronts. That's not to say we haven't faced individual challenges that are more daunting; anyone who has been on a battlefield or fought for their life knows that dealing with power outages or inflation pales by comparison. But that doesn't mean the fight against globalism is going to be easy.............To Read More....