The Quiet Conservative May 3, 2009
Fighting a Clean War.
It would be interesting to see if there was ever a war in history fought by the Marquis of Queensbury
Rules. War is about killing and subjugating the enemy. This has been so from the Plains of Marathon
to the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
There are rules to warfare. They are followed when countries agree that it is in their best interest to
do so. As a general policy these rules govern the strategic application of force, not the tactical. They
are also as much to protect the governments from their own people as they are about protecting the
soldiers on the battlefields.
In World War One the Germans used poison gas. They did so without warning and with full
knowledge of the horror they would inflict. When the war was over conventions were signed and
despite the lip service given to the abolishment of gas and nerve agents, everyone got busy developing
the most horrible ones they could.
The reason nerve agents, biological agents, and chemical weapons haven't been used is not because
they aren't effective, it is because the public repulsion over their use is likely to bring down the
government using them. Not a very noble reason, but there have been very few to employ such
weapons of mass destruction since the First World War.
The other reason for the lack of such indiscriminate weapons is at the end of World War Two the
United States deployed the ultimate in mass destruction: the atom bomb. What country wants to use a
weapon basically tactical in nature to dominate a battlefield, when a superpower can turn your cities to
molten glass and slag?
But war is savagery. The purpose is to kill and destroy the enemy's ability to fight; to either kill the
opposition or take away their ability to fight. On a battlefield there are no referees. At the end of the
battle there are only the dead and those who are not. A bullet through the head, an explosion that
shreds flesh, a stream of fire that burns, a sharp blade that pierces, all end life and the goal is to do it to
them before they do it to you. Is that something you would engage in under the Marquis of
Queensbury rules? The other guy isn't going to follow the rules. He only wants to kill you. If you try
and fight a clean war by artificial rules, he more than likely will be the one breathing and you will be the
one dead. Trying to fight a war with strict adherence to a code the other guy won't follow is a death
sentence. In the war in terror, the terrorists aren't following any rules at all. America is a nation that
sees itself as good. We try and not hurt other people and we try and follow a moral code. We try and
bend this code as little as possible, but it is stupid and absurd to believe it is possible to fight a dirty fight
and stay clean.
Ah, but you say: then don't fight wars at all. Peace is the answer. "All we are saying, is give peace
a chance." --"What if they gave a war and nobody came?"--"Make love, not war."-- insert your
fortune cookie slogan here. Our party in power has this mindset. The drumbeat from the Department
of State, the White House, and from Congress is to move away from even calling it a war at all.
Instead they are trying to repaint the conflict as a criminal matter and a diplomatic issue. They wish to
declare defending the nation a mistake and proclaim peace restored. Peace with honor or not, but peace
it must be.
If war is killing, then peace is murder. Those that wish for peace at any price are the most deluded.
More people have been murdered in "peace" than ever lost their lives in war:
The Armenian Genocide 1.5 million, Holocaust-11 million, Soviet Collectivization-12 to 17 million,
Tojo in China 5 million, China's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution 20-78 million, Pol Pot
1.7 million, Ethiopia- 1.5 million, Biafra- 1million, and trailing little Rwanda at a measly 800,000.
These aren't all either, just enough to make a point. From the beginning of the century to the end over
117,500,000 had their lives snuffed out in 'PEACE.' It makes war looked positively fair, Marquis of
Queensbury or not.
There are people out there today that would murder, rape, pillage, destroy, and kill just about every
American they could. Some kindle hatred in their hearts, some just see a target of opportunity. The
Somali pirates didn't care they took an American ship. They didn't care if they killed the crew. They
wanted money and there was nothing right or wrong about it. Muslim extremists don't care if we are
tolerant, they are not. They don't care if we want a dialogue and want to empathize with their cultural
values, they want us to either submit to Islam or die. The former Soviet Union doesn't care we want to
apologize for winning the Cold War, they want to control the energy supply pipelines to Europe. China
doesn't care we are discontinuing the F-22 line and are busy dismantling our defenses in a show of
goodwill, they are developing a blue water navy as quickly as they can to take on the US and ensure
any action they choose to take on Taiwan cannot be resisted by us. War is the hot portion between the
pauses of peace. They are a continuation of each nation projecting their interests into the world.
So it is utterly baffling why the current administration is releasing the interrogation memos, pictures,
and tapes. It is beyond comprehension that they have stopped using the phrase "The War on Terror"
and have tried to abandon every measure that has stopped the attacks for the past seven years. They
are even turning on those who kept us safe. They have indicated they would not pursue a missile
shield, would not modernize our nuclear arsenal, would cut funding in all parts of the military, and
would seek to withdraw from active measures to secure the Southern border.
My thoughts watching the party in power in two of the three branches, and sometimes coming out of
left field on the Supreme Court, come back to the following quote that runs through my mind when
hearing the news. It is attributed to General Kurt von Hammerstein (1933)
I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid.
Each officer possess at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint
to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy.
the man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite
nerves and the mental clarity of difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be
got rid of, for he is too dangerous.