journal:

Favors for The Enemy

By Jonathan Feaster

2008-05-25

America is already in enough trouble because of Washington's abominable interventionist foreign policy and now there's talk again about bringing back the draft. Are they deliberately trying to depopulate the country and do favors for our enemies?

After reading Michael Scheuer's excellent book, Imperial Hubris it's sickening to think that more people will have forced involvement in such a poorly understood situation. Not only do these politicians and most people lack an understanding of liberty, foreign policy and our enemies but a majority of them also lack an understanding of warfare in general.

Just wars are only fought in self-defense, they are not fought for fantastic ideas like "spreading democracy". The ignorance of the idea that democracy can simply be "implemented" is an insult to all of those people who have fought for freedom throughout history as it devalues freedom itself and what it takes to obtain it. Consider what Scheuer has to say:

"The tragedy-producing potential of this arrogance is increased because it is wrapped in American hubris that has forgotten or - given the education our youngest voters have received - never learned the nature and length of the arduous and often bloody struggle Americans have waged to get to their present stage of self government. American democracy began not in Jamestown in 1608, or at the Continental Congress in 1776, but - to pick a plausible date - in 1215 when the English barons reduced King John's arbitrary powers at Runnymede. From that medieval glen to the American political system of 2003 is a nearly eight-century journey tracing a gradual but not inevitable advance of personal liberty, guaranteed civil rights, self-government, an independent judiciary, and the separation of church and state. These are unprecedented accomplishments, but the road traversed to attain them has not been smooth; rather, it has been marked by brutal and bloody events and personalities, as well as by civil war, protracted legal struggles, urban riots, noble lives sacrificed, voting fraud, lynchings, ethnic and racial violence, labor-business clashes, and virtually every form of hatred, prejudice, and bigotry. In defeating these obstacles Americans have been helped - by great good luck or the kindness of Providence, take your pick - by residing on a fertile, temperate, and resource-rich continent tucked away from some of the most devastating events on the road to where we stand today."

Just wars are fought by volunteers, not slave draftees. For some of us who are paying attention, it might even seem that instituting a draft doesn't say much about our resolve and may actually embolden our enemies when they consider that everyone on their side is there voluntarily.

Our resolve is already being called into question when you look at how the government has continually failed to even seriously recognize that our enemy is, not merely a crazed criminal gang, but a military threat that is motivated by the belief that we are a threat to their religion and an invader of their lands. Furthermore, the government has also failed to take seriously the enormous costs of an actual war that can only be won with the clear objective to decisively defeat the enemy. This is all not to say that our soldiers at the front haven't executed their tasks well and made strides but it is to say that it seems that the higher-ups and politicians haven't kept the big picture in mind for some time now. By contrasting the views of war making by American soldiers of the past with today's idea of war making, Scheuer explains how we haven't decisively defeated an enemy in at least two decades by old standards.

"Each of these American soldiers knew-by training, intuition, or both-that war is a last resort and that once begun it is immoral and unnecessarily costly not to destroy the enemy and end the war as soon as possible. Damage is to be inflicted to the degree needed to ensure the enemy does not pose a military threat-this by measuring destruction on his order-of-battle-and that he no longer has the will, resources, or infrastructure to resist. Grant and Sherman, for example, would have recognized the uselessness of occupying Afghan cities without destroying the Taleban and al Qaeda, just as they knew victory was not won if Union armies occupied Richmond, Charleston, and Atlanta without destroying the rebel armies of Northern Virginia and Tennessee."

You could go on and on about the blunder that is the Federal Government's current foreign policy. The bottom line is that the usual culprit, The U.S. Government, not the American people, is what is causing our problems abroad by doing what it does best-meddling with things it doesn't understand and not doing what is says it's going to do. If done wrong and for the wrong reasons, war can be the greatest boondoggle of them all. It is easier said than done but if you have to go to war you go justly, you know your enemy, you defeat your enemy as quickly as possible and then you go home.

• Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer