To war or not to war???

Just finished reading Seal Team Six by Howard Wasdin, a Silver Star and Purple Heart winner. He game me a view on the Mogadishu raid somewhat different from what I found in Blackhawk Down and news reports. The prevailing view is that the raid was a defeat, and we pulled out of Somalia. Wasdin makes a good case that it was a victory, losing 18 men, but killing hundreds of the bad guys. The troops expected to go back in the next day and finish the job. But TV carried the dragging of two of our men's bodies through the street, and Clinton backed us off.

This is a pattern ever since Korea. I'm not at all sure we should have gone into those places, now including Iraq and Afghanistan. But we need to quit thinking we can fight a limited war. WWII resulted in unconditional surrender, and we owned those countries. Many civilians were killed, both by the atomic blasts and the carpet bombing in Germany. But we won, and neither land is threatening world peace at the moment. On the contrary, they are among our closest allies.

Where did we get the idea that we could fight a limited war? Look at the problems in the wars we have "lost" or at least have not yet "won."

Korea and Vietnam both had the same problem. We drew a line across the country with the intention of throwing communists out of the South, but not attacking the North. Now kids, if I play football with you, there's no way I'm going to let you be free to score on me while I'm promising never to cross your fifty yard line. That's just stupid.

We were afraid of China. Maybe we were right to be scared of them, but in that case, we should have stayed out of the war. If we go into a war, we should go whole hog and end up owning the country.

Consider the Gulf War. We had 34 allied countries fighting with us. We could easily and popularly have rolled on to Baghdad and on the other side. We would never have needed to consider the second attack on Iraq and might well have avoided some of the tribal problems by a military governorship long enough to give them an infrastructure - roads and utilities and teach them how to run them.

Perhaps it is true the media's showing the terror of war puts a lot of pressure on the politicians and military. If this pressure is going to keep us from winning, then DON'T GO IN. As I recall we went into Iraq then with half a million troops, but left because we had accomplished the mission of kicking Saddam out of Kuwait.

20/20 hindsight is famous, but we repeatedly keep thinking we can fight a nice war, never killing civilians or staying within arbitrary limits. When we do that, we lose or appear to lose. Our military has never lost a war. Our politicians regularly lose the will to fight, bombarded by public opinions.

Again, let me be clear. I am by no means a warmonger. With perfect hindsight, it would have been better to roll up Iraq in the 90's and then leave them to themselves. I do think we had to invade part of Afghanistan after 9/11, but probably with at least 300,000 men with a goal of owning the place. Neither would I pussyfoot with Pakistan. By now, I think we should own that territory that keeps giving us so much trouble with a promise to give it back to them, cleaned out and in better shape.

Just one man's opinion. Stay out completely or go all in.