The cost of War
I was listening to a talk radio show the other day. The host said something somewhat profound. We are not fighting the war to win, we are fighting to not lose. There is a difference. Since the Korean war, this is pretty much the way we have been fighting wars, to not lose.
The cost of war in dollars and lives is huge and almost always too high. However, once you commit to fighting the war, you have to be willing to do what it takes to win the war. War is terrible and probably the worst thing one civilization can do to another. We have to be willing to do what it takes to win the war in the shortest possible time regardless of cost.
How did we defeat Japan in World War II? Tragically, we detonated nuclear weapons on civilian targets. This cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives but probably saved millions in the long run. How about fire bombing Dresden? Tens of thousands of civilian casualties. Tragic, but necessary.
I think I have been pretty clear on my position regarding the Iraq war, I am opposed to it. We went for the wrong reasons and with the wrong motivations. We had no clear definition of victory conditions. We had no clear support from the neighboring countries. When do we say we won?
If your going to win a war you cannot be squeamish about the cost. Americans don’t like the human cost so it’s obvious that we cannot fight a traditional war and win. Our “enemy” is hopping on buses full of children and killing them all. They run into markets and kill everyone there. But when one of our bombs goes to the wrong place and kills two or three innocent people we are vilified by our own people.
If your enemy is willing to kill civilians and hide among them, and they know your people cannot stomach it what do you think the result is? Well thats pretty simple, if I were the enemy general I would goad you into killing civilians, set up military supply stations in schools, hide munitions in baby food factories let you know I was going to attack a market and leak my hiding location to you.
It’s a simple strategy for them, they cannot beat us in an all out confrontation so why fight it at all. The more dedicated wins and they are the more dedicated. Bush and the congress have lost a lot of the support of the people fighting this war. Just like all the wars since the Korean war. If we are not willing to fight this kind of war then we must be creative and fight the war a different way.
How about this, the war is funded almost entirely by oil. Stop using their oil, you take away their funding for the war and our need to be there in the region. We can take this kind of monetary war, we fought it with Russia for years. But first you have to have a president that does not make all their money off of oil. You also have to have a people that can understand the trade-off. Oil for lives, we give up oil to save lives. The cost will be higher than a traditional war but the long-term gains worth it.