War and the Military

Like every sane person I know, I would love to see a world without violent conflict but I am not so ‘progressive’ as to believe that the world is a peaceful place or that it is possible to do without an effective military.  But I do believe in the same approach in the use of an army by a nation that I believe in for the use of a handgun by an individual – don’t pull it out unless the situation is dire enough that you will use it immediately, accurately, and to it’s full extent.

A handgun is not a tool of negotiation, it is not a motivator, it is a device meant to eliminate a serious threat.  An army is not a diplomatic corps, it is not a police unit, it is not a peaceful tool of politics, an agent of commerce or a social motivator.  An army is what you use when you need to exert force to neutralize a serious threat in an efficient manner.

I am not in any way against military action.  I believe that there are situations where sending in soldiers to settle a situation is absolutely necessary.  But I believe there are rules to how and when you send in the soldiers, and those rules need to be followed or the reputation and world standing of the nation will be put in jeopardy.

My children have no recollection of a United States at peace.  My daughters are in fourth and fifth grades, and they don’t know peace, and they don’t know real war.  They are being taught by our constant level of conflict that this is the way a normal day goes.  And that upsets me greatly, by the time they are adults that attitude will be ingrained in them.  That is a sickening thought.

We have not waged a truly effective war with a definite outcome since World War II, but we have lost thousands of soldier souls in wars that accomplished no goal except to flex military muscle.   Sure, we have won some battles, but not a war.  I have been told by experts in the field that the reason for this is a philosophy called ‘mutually assured economic destruction’, an ideal that states that if you go into a place with your military, and you don’t act in a way that every other nation in the world will accept or respect, then you will end up making enemies of your greatest allies, creating economic hardships that will continue to limit your ability to wage effective war, and that in the end as long as the focus is on the globalization of all nations no war will ever be won or lost, they will just peter out and go away.  I honestly don’t know at which levels this philosophy has been adopted, but the end results of our military conflicts certainly bear out the reality of completely tying our waging of war into our globalized social structure.

You cannot declare and prosecute an effective war if you do not consider yourself an independent and sovereign nation.  There is no way to properly identify threats against you if you consider yourself just one part of a world community that is focused more on it’s own regional problems than on yours.  And you cannot expect to protect yourself and eliminate threats against your citizens when your focus is on your cooperative part of a world community that does not have the same assessment of the threat.  You must consider that if the threat against you is real enough, you need to be able to prosecute your war by yourself.  It is not pleasant, such a thought leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and well it should.  War has to be unpleasant.  When it becomes just an acceptable daily activity, it loses all purpose and the country that treats it as such is lost.

When you declare war, you must understand that you need to commit to boots-on-the-ground, safeties off, locked and loaded conflict.  People are going to be put in harms way, people are going to die, and it had better be worth it.  When you send in your army, you do not need to send them in hobbled, and you do not send them in to be diplomats or politicians.  You send them in to eliminate a threat effectively and with as little loss to our people and our nation as possible.  If there is any hope of diplomacy, you keep your army out.  Once they are there, you cannot cripple them.

It is a fact of war that there is collateral damage.  It is one of the saddest parts of human nature that there will always be some individuals who will instigate a situation of deadly conflict without care for their own people.  That is why it is important for our army to be used only to defend.  Because if we use our military with respect to the rest of the world, only when it is the proper solution, and only when provoked far enough to justify the results of war, we can accomplish the necessary end with integrity, even if it will not be pretty.

So many things have become convoluted in the past half a century, we have started to believe the sanitized notion that war can be clean and fair and nobody will die that doesn’t deserve it.  It is a sad fact of life that war isn’t clean or fair.  That is why it should be avoided at any reasonable cost, but if it becomes unavoidable, it should not be waged with the expectations of pretty and sanitary, it should be prosecuted for full efficiency as a final option and a final solution.

You need to identify a real enemy, and let the world know that you have an enemy that is fight-able, not just a tactic.  A global war on terror is no war at all.  You have to wage a global war on terrorists.  You have to identify them, and you have to be able to justify your claims.  I don’t care if the current politically correct thought is to avoid naming names or pointing fingers – if you are waging war, you had better be able to do so.  And you cannot wage an ongoing war against a tactic or method – you will never defeat either of those.  You must be able to defeat the enemy or waging a war is pointless.

You need to be direct and specific in declaring war on that enemy before you unleash your military to rain destruction on them.  That is what your military is supposed to do.  To not allow them to do so to the fullest extent of their ability is to waste their time, their training, their equipment, probably their lives, and the taxpayers money.  It is also the most certain way to bog the people of the nation down into fear and depression and desperation, and destroy the enthusiasm that is needed at home while we wage war on foreign soil.

You cannot wage an offensive war to help elevate a people who have shown no inclination to elevate themselves.  Until a population gets it in their mind that they want to be free of their oppressors and are willing to fight and die to do it, you cannot commit your people to the task.  Fighting an enemy and dragging along a population that is not committed to the fight only puts our soldiers at much higher risk and their civilians much further into harms way.  In a war of liberation, as the foreign army you must be the assistant force, not the main force.  And you must be sure that your local fighters are more committed to the job than you are.  Any other situation spells disaster, no matter how compassionate it might seem to help a weak and oppressed foreign population.

War is a nasty thing, it destroys families, it kills children, it maims mothers and daughters, it destroys homes and societies.  But sometimes it is necessary.  But in the spirit of compassion, be effective, be devastating, and be victorious quickly if you are going to take the step of waging war.  And never forget, don’t go in unless you are justified, and if you are justified, damn the opinions of others in the international community, you will NOT suffer any important international consequences for fighting when there was no other option.

Christopher Nogy