Another Viet Nam

The leg warmer, panty wearing, tree hugger set turned out to be right about the war in Afghanistan after all. Afghanistan is turning out to be another Viet Nam. And for the same reasons!

The politicians are not letting the soldiers do their jobs.

I remember guys coming back from Nam talking about their rules of engagement. They told me they would fly missions to the north and watch SAM sites being built and were not allowed to destroy them until they fired on our flights! That is a politician's decision. A soldier would never, ever, make such a rule.

Now I read about the rules of engagement our guys are laboring under and have to shake my head. Our soldiers are fired on from a position close to a village and they are not allowed to return fire because they might hit an "innocent". What a crock of horse squeeze.

Our soldiers actually see some dirt bag fire on them and then drop his weapon. They are not allowed to arrange a meeting with allah for this creep because he is no longer holding a weapon.

No wonder our soldiers are having troubles coming back from this type of idiocy! Our political class would rather our own boys die than possibly have some nominally innocent noncombatant get injured.

As John Stuart Mill so aptly put it, "War is an ugly thing...". It should be avoided and undertaken only after careful deliberation. However, once the decision has been made, the military should be given all of the support and supplies the nation can muster and then get out of their way. The purpose of the military is to break things and kill people. Once you unleash the hounds of war, let them do their best.

I submit to you that if we unleash all holy hell with devastating effect, we will actually save lives in the long run, both theirs and ours. By letting the politicians ham string our forces because they are worried about what others think we only make it easier for our foes to carry on the fight and encourage their supporters.

If, on the other hand, a withering attack is laid upon them, the will to fight can be taken from them. I give you Japan and the end of WWII as an example. They were prepared to fight yo the last village until the bomb was dropped on them. Yes, a couple of hundred thousand people were killed in an instant and that was terrible, however, millions would have lost their lives and the entire country would have been laid to waste had we gone about it in the way we had up to that point. As awful as Nagasaki and Hiroshima were, in the big picture they saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Not only does this unleashing of hell shorten the fight, it reduces the likelihood of someone else attacking us. If they see the destruction we not only can but are willing to loose on them, it will give them serious second thoughts before striking out at us.

Now our politicians make the decision to go to war, then worry about the PR aspects and proceed to handicap our forces so it makes their job WAY more difficult if not impossible.

Yes Afghanistan is becoming another Viet Nam, but it's not the military's fault. It's the fault of the lilly livered liberals and the weak kneed politicians!