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Apr. 17, 2007 William Tecumseh Sherman knew how to wage war. While General Grant broke the back of the Confederacy with a war of attrition, Sherman broke the spirit on his march to the sea. Sherman also famously said, “War is hell.” Such short sentences are nice for epigrams but what he really probably meant is, “War is hell laid on the doorstep of the enemy.” Nazi Germany knew how to wage war. Divisions of fast-moving armor racing across the Lowlands and sirens screaming terror as the Stukas made their dives and dropped their bombs. General Curtis LeMay knew how to wage war. Send massed B-17s over the enemy and bomb the bejesus out of everything under the airplane. George S. Patton knew how to wage war. “Kill Germans” was his mantra. Somewhere along the line, our present-day leaders have forgotten how to win wars. Perhaps they cut class that day. Let’s look at some of the history they should have studied. The first World War was fought in trenches, a years-long stalemate. While there were certainly civilian casualties, they were mostly French and Belgian. Of soldiers, millions died on each side, almost an entire generation of young men. But, hell, who keeps count of soldiers? That’s what they are there for. Result? An armistice. No victory, no defeat, just both sides finally agreeing to quit fighting. And, since Germany did not feel defeat, it was easy for them to rise again twenty years later. World War II was different. Allies bombed hell out of German cities and as early as 1944 – before D-Day – German generals knew the war was lost. Only a crazed leader kept things going long after the will of the people was broken. Similarly, in Japan – probably our most fanatical enemy until this latest war – the firebombing and the atomic bombs let them know, with no doubt, that they had been defeated. And in defeat, both countries adopted new forms of government that ensured they could never again be forced to war by a madman or by the code of honor of a few generals. But we’ve forgotten how to wage war and how to beat the enemy. Watch a program on the Discovery Channel called “Future Weapons” and you’ll see what I’m talking about. We’re pouring millions of dollars into the development of smart weapons, so smart they can target the corner office of a downtown building and do it from such a distance as to be almost unbelievable. I’ve seen a bomb that drops multiple hockey pucks, each puck coming to hover over a tank and then firing a rocket that sends them into the tank with destructive force. Okay. We knocked out all the tanks, but what about the foot soldiers following along? How about a little collateral damage here, general? And, of course, there are more such “surgical” weapons, too many to recount here. The point is that we send a million-dollar smart missile into that corner office to take out an Al-Qiada leader and then what? Why, his second in command picks up the ball and runs with it. So we wait, try to locate him with questionable intelligence and, when the time seems right, send another million-dollar missile to destroy him and his office without affecting the plumbing or breaking more than a few windows. Then, of course, the next guy in the chain of command… you guessed it. Maybe if we’d just brought down the whole damned building… Listen, anyone can wage war but not everyone can win wars. To win, you must so affect the enemy that he loses the will to resist. Otherwise, how does he know he lost? A supreme irony of the present war in Iraq is that most of the Iraqi soldiers deserted. They did not stay to see the outcome, to know whether they won or lost. But about a week after U.S. forces entered Baghdad, those same deserters were asking us –US – for their back pay! How different might things have been if, instead of using smart weapons, we had used tried and true anti-personnel weapons? How different if we had killed or maimed half the army instead of allowing them to go home to their weapons caches and mount a resistance? A popular saying in our military is, “We kill people and break things.” Cute. The problem is that some idiots decided there is such a thing as a “humane war” and as a result we did not kill enough people or break enough things. To win a war, you must utterly demoralize the enemy and the enemy is more than the guys in uniform. For every company of soldiers, there is a host of enablers: those who make the munitions, sew the uniforms, build the tanks, tend the wounded. All must be made to feel the terror of war. Viet Nam was a war of attrition without the trenches until Linebacker II – the bombing of Hanoi – brought the enemy to the conference table and made him keep his seat until an agreement was reached. Never mind that the agreement may not have been the best or even in our best interests. The point is that the enemy was intractable so long as only soldiers were being hurt. When hell was brought to his doorstep, it got his attention quickly. In the end, we’ve proved that Shock and Awe is no substitute for terror. The enemy knows that. Why don’t we? ------------ About the author: Erv Bobo is a freelance writer with delusions of being a humorist He is the author of THE CHEYENNE BRAND, currently available at Lulu.com. Email: Dasher1945@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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