Lone Survivor

THE REASONS FOR WAR

by TPATH Contributor John McClain, US Marine Veteran, ©2014

(Jan. 25, 2014) — We’ve been at war now continuously since I was born, fifty six years ago, and having served two decades active in the Corps, I still don’t have a clue how our “political leadership” ever allowed us into any of these wars.  Today, we have great controversy over overt things, but the real controversy lies in covert things, the questions all the warriors want answered, but which are always refused.

A survivor from a Navy Seal Team, a warrior who lost all his closest friends in an operation gone wrong, is trying his best to understand after the fact, how anyone sent such an operation forward, while the civilian media interviewer is doing his best to see where anything had any chance of success at all, from the outset.

There is a good reason for the total break between the warrior, dealing with the reality, and the newsman, who simply can’t see the mission except as an opportunity to pour Americans down a hole and then seal it up.  We didn’t go to war to secure America, we went to war to retaliate.   The warrior can’t allow his mind be taken up with war’s reason, he must be filled to the top with skill, preparation and the certain knowledge he will prevail, and cannot allow doubt in.

That newsman, asking the questions, he has nothing equal in force to the demands survival puts on the warrior, yet it is that newsman, all his fellow journalists, who drive public opinion, lead people to take up the cry for war, or otherwise, step out in the call for serious consideration before making a hasty decision.  It is those who get their information from the news who contact their representative, call their senators, make the real pressure put on the politician.

We all will remember eleven September, 2001, we who witnessed the attack on the World Trade Center, and we consider this good cause for our going to war, but who remembers the Gulf War, and why we took on Iraq?  Who knows why Hussein went into Kuwait, why he risked our wrath?

Only those who seriously pursued this question have any answer, and for the rest, you are supposed to simply accept there was a good reason, and we showed him.  The base fact is this; for all who never found out why Saddam Hussein demanded a wife for his eldest son from Kuwait, and the king of Kuwait mocked him.  Hussein took Kuwait, we used this as the excuse to wage full scale war in Iraq, yet not settle anything at all.

From the time of our entry into the First World War up to the present, we’ve had military and cultural forces in the midst of the area historically influenced by Arab and Persian authority, a place which has roots for most all people, and has been the battlefield for millennia.    What had ceased to be world trade routes returned with the discovery of oil in the mid-east.  Suddenly, there was reason to look again toward world dominion; oil had replaced control of trade routes.

We went to war over issues of no good purpose for us.  We entered with no plan to win, and we left an open-ended mess.  When we got attacked at home, our politicians decided they would change the way the Middle East worked.

We went to war to accomplish their intent, but entirely absent any possible means.  Every bit of what has happened since has been the fall-out of failure to establish rational goals, and take the means capable of accomplishing them.

We can no more turn the mid-east into a copy of “America” than Iran can turn us into a copy of themselves. Wars can only be won if they are predicated on reason, with real purpose, and calculated in reality, with rational goals.  We had to return on the attack of the World Trade Center.  We had no cause to go to war, we could just as easily made a real point by attacking a target of equal political value, demonstrating our capability of striking back, and could have avoided sending any forces anywhere.  Don’t we keep ballistic missiles for a purpose?  Could we have altered the outcome in Iraq, had we used our strategic weapons, instead of people, and allowed the area to settle back into balance?

Contact John HERE

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January 24, 2014 ~TPATH~ There is no way, with my limited service as a draftee during the Viet Nam era, that I  can even begin to compare my time in the service with the sacrifices of true heroes such as John McClain.  However, it is important that a few things be pointed out concerning his article.

First there is no dispute that he is correct when he stated that  this country entered both Iraqi wars without a plan or a desire to actually win.   This of course had no reflection on either the Military leaders or the men who followed them into battle.  They did, as they have always done, all they could do under the conditions they were placed.

And it may be true that Saddam indeed had some personal issues with the Kingdom of Kuwait, the real issue was oil.  Its always about oil.  Because this country has been under the thumb of environmentalists and other leftists for so many decades, our ability to produce our own energy has suffered and put us in the position of keeping the life’s blood available, from wherever in the world it could be obtained.  To that end, we have had to be involved with the politics and murdering despots who control that flow.

As I have written before, George Bush’s policy was flawed from the beginning.  It never had a chance to work and it never will. He looked at the mess the world was in and understood the causes.  The Middle East, Islamic terrorists and oil.  He saw no end to it for decades to come.  If, as his doctrine surmised, Iraq could be turned into a Democratic and free country, other states in the middle east would see the prosperity, the booming economy and the freedoms living under elected leaders could provide,  as opposed to religious and murderous zealots they then endured.

GW believed, as many of us did, that freedom was inherent to human desire and he could not understand that all people of the world did not dream of it.  They do not!  What we as Americans have in our genes, in our very being, is not present anywhere in the Islamic Middle East.  Islam and freedom are as different as acid and honey.  As long as the Koran is their guide, misery will be their future.  We need to find a way, not to join them.

Given that Bush’s goals were admirable, I believe that history will treat him well.  Provided it is our America which does the writing of it.  At this point, given the acquiescence of our politicians and the love of Islam the usurper in our White House espouses, that seems very unlikely.

The only way we can prevent the repeat of involvement in the hell holes of the Middle East is if this county adopts a New Doctrine.  It should look like this:

1. Develop every energy source possible in this country, for this country.
2. Warn any country which supports terrorism that if any group or person they have trained or financed attacks America or Americans the consequences will be as follows:

• Our Air Force and Navy will pummel your Military, your infrastructure and your industry back to the stone age.
• No American soldier will set foot in your country.
• Not one dime will be spent rebuilding one building or one bridge.
• If the people of your country chose to permit the type of leadership which caused our attack, once again take power and allow terrorism to threaten America, whether it be one year or ten, our Air Force will be back.

Except for giving Israel the resources it would need to fend off the hoards, what a great world it would be if America could be in the position to ignore the bloody slide to Armageddon and the return of the 12th Imam.

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