The U.S. military is at its best when unleashed to kill people and break things in the furtherance of liberty. We have superior firepower, superior weapons systems, and air superiority. More than any of those things, we have the best personnel any nation could deploy (just ask Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden).
Because of these things, our military shines when allowed to use the tools and weapons in our arsenal to get the job done.
On the other hand, we place our military personnel in a precarious position when we send them to war but refuse to let them fight to win. This was the lesson of the Vietnam War, where President Lyndon Baines Johnson kept sending out troops to Vietnam while simultaneously refusing to let them fight in a way that could secure victory. For example, although he was sending them to fight the North Vietnamese, among others, he made promises to Ho Chi Minh that our planes would not be used to bomb historical places, landmarks, places of worship, etc., in North Vietnam.
Therefore, although our men went to fight and were trained to win, they found themselves in a war where Johnson had already surrendered, for all intents and purposes, by promising safe havens to our enemy.
And it’s frightening how similar the mess in Afghanistan is starting to look when compared to the mess in Vietnam. And the blame for it falls squarely on Barack Obama, who is so busy groveling at the feet of Karzai that he can’t even think about winning. And when he’s not groveling at Karzai’s feet, he’s sending Jay Carney out to blame President Bush for the violence that’s broken out in Afghanistan during the last seven days.
We have men losing their lives in Afghanistan, men being shot by Afghans who are upset because we burned religious materials in which detainees were writing “extremist messages or inscriptions” to one another. And instead of standing up to those doing the violence, Obama has been neutered by Karzai on the international stage.
Obama has chosen to use words instead of guns, and in a Vietnam redo, our troops are the ones who will pay the price if he doesn’t change course. It is time to quit talking–to let the aggressors know the next time they throw grenades at one of our bases or take a shot at one of our soldiers or even hurl stones, we will respond with a show of force that will leave their allies trembling with fear.
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