Friday, July 1, 2016

Fighting to Win

The Obama administration likes to portray itself as a fearless fighter against terrorism. By its own claims, it has kept the nation safe from Islamist terrorism.

To do so, it has found an excellent ruse. Whenever an act of Islamist terrorism happens, the administration insists that it has nothing to do with Islamist terrorism. It is workplace violence or a gun control issue. Failing to call it Islamist terrorism enhances the administration’s record of winning against Islamist terrorism.

But, a nagging question remains. What are we going to do about ISIS? Why have we failed in Syria? Why has the ISIS caliphate been expanding? Why does the Director of the CIA say that our efforts have been less than effective?

What do the candidates have to say? While Trump seems certainly to be stronger than Clinton on the subject, we have still not heard any specific proposals, any actionable plans.

So, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters takes a look at the problem and comes up with a plan.

Peters writes that they want to win. We do not. We want to occupy the moral high ground. They know that people who occupy the moral high ground are targets. And, as we have mentioned on this blog, we have put the troops under the command of lawyers. We are so squeamish that we are afraid of taking out the internet in Raqqa.

Peters identifies the problem:

The greatest advantage Islamist fanatics have over us is their strength of will, their determination to win. The terrorists literally will do anything to achieve victory.

We seek the blessing of lawyers, the approval of critics and minimal loss of life. So we’re losing.

The Obama administration celebrates the recapture of a few hick towns in Iraq, while ISIS and its affiliates spread around the world. Contrary to the inane claim by Secretary of State John Kerry, ISIS is not attacking us because it’s desperate, but because it can — because it has an electrifying vision of a changed world, while we placate ourselves with absurd rationalizations and politically correct fantasies.

So, what should we be doing? Peters offers a plan:

  • Strong leadership that will do whatever it takes to win.
  • Ruthlessness equal to that of our enemies.
  • The recognition that Islamist fanatics must be exterminated wherever we find them. No pipe dreams of persuasion, please.
  • The acceptance that there is no clean way to make war.
  • The recognition of collective guilt, as applied to the Germans and Japanese in World War II.
  • The recognition that civilization cannot be saved solely by civilized means.
He is suggesting that we are not going to win until we decide that we will do what it takes to win. We need to be ruthless. We are getting nowhere by trying to win hearts and minds. In fact, our weakness has caused us to lose hearts and minds.

And, of course, we must begin calling Islamist terrorism by its name. If terrorism exacts no reputational cost to Muslims, moderate members of the faith will refuse to face the fanatics in their midst. If we exonerate Islam while blaming the NRA and Christian Republicans they will conclude that we are divided and weak, unwilling to fight, uninterested in winning.

8 comments:

Ares Olympus said...

There was no article link, so google helped me find this one, identifying the author Ralph Peters as Fox News’ strategic analyst.
http://nypost.com/2016/06/30/to-defeat-isis-we-must-as-ruthless-as-they-are/

I wonder if "Ruthlessness equal to that of our enemies." means we need to kill innocent people with equal ruthlessness as our enemies?

Here's some recent news on his reporting:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/07/media/fox-profanities-against-obama/index.html
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Two Fox News commentators were suspended on Monday for using profanities while criticizing President Obama.

Ralph Peters, a Fox News "strategic analyst," called the president a "total pu---" who "doesn't want to hurt our enemies."

"Earlier today, Fox contributors Lt. Col. Ralph Peters made comments on different programs that were completely inappropriate and unacceptable for our air," Fox senior executive vice president Bill Shine said.

"Fox Business Network and Fox News Channel do not condone the use of such language, and have suspended both Peters and Dash for two weeks," he said.
------

If Peter's is too disrespectful for Fox News, you know he's a serious patriot.

It looks like soon we'll find out how much of a pussy Obama is, when he releases his civilian drone death report:
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2016/07/01/drones-civilian-casualties/86589910/
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The White House is to disclose the casualties with a range of numbers indicating that an estimated 100 civilians have been inadvertently killed by 500 drone strikes since 2009. The estimate is said to cover drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia. It does not cover ones in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria where U.S. forces have conducted thousands of air attacks.

The individuals spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose the information.
-----

Maybe if we did laser-focused carpet-bombing until the sand glows like Ted Cruz proposed, the world would respect us more?

Soon it'll be President Trump's job to be more ruthless, more pussyless.

Maybe we can go back to the good old Vietnam days where the nightly news announced how many kills for that day? But apparently mere ruthless brutality or exaggerated body counts at least wasn't enough in that case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_count#Vietnam_War
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Since the goal of the United States in the Vietnam War was not to conquer North Vietnam but rather to ensure the survival of the South Vietnamese government, measuring progress was difficult. All the contested territory was theoretically "held" already. Instead, the US Army used body counts to show that the US was winning the war. The Army's theory was that eventually, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army would lose after the attrition warfare.

According to historian Christian Appy, "search and destroy was the principal tactic; and the enemy body count was the primary measure of progress" in General Westmoreland’s war of attrition. Search and destroy was coined as a phrase in 1965 to describe missions aimed at flushing the Viet Cong out of hiding, while the body count was the measuring stick for the success of any operation. Competitions were held between units for the highest number of Vietnamese killed in action, or KIAs. Army and marine officers knew that promotions were largely based on confirmed kills. The pressure to produce confirmed kills resulted in massive fraud. One study revealed that 61 % of American commanders considered that body counts were grossly exaggerated.
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sestamibi said...

Peters is right, but don't expect anything like implementing his recommendations anytime soon.

The unpleasant truth is that Obama represents a sizeable chunk of those currently inhabiting what we still call "The United States of America". We have huge numbers of Third World vermin here who actively support ISIS and their cohorts. I don't say our "enemies", because those people are actively supporting them. When you have that many on the other side, the term "enemies" is no longer appropriate.

And of course, if all that weren't bad enough, we have an increasingly pussified society run by feminists, and are poised to install one as commander-in-chief, all her transgressions notwithstanding. When our president-to-be says we have to empathize with our enemies, when our House minority leader gets the vapors after an address to Congress by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, when our attorney general says the way to defeat ISIS is through love, compassion, and unity, then it's all over for us.

Get a gun and defend yourself by any means necessary.

Ares Olympus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ares Olympus said...

On my morning run at a local park I met up with an elderly neighbor, father of one of my high school classmates, and I had last met him at the GOP convention in 2004 when we were in the first phases of the Iraq war.

Anyway, this morning I asked him was he thought of Trump and he said he supported Rubio at the February Caucus, and basically implied he thought Trump was a clown and embarrassment to the republican party. But when I asked if he'd be supporting Trump in the general election I never got an answer out of him. He did say he's never voted third party.

The closest I got was he said "We need someone like Trump" with an implicit qualifier [but someone who has less of a big mouth] so to me that suggested he'd be voting for Trump, primarily because of his anti-muslim immigration stance, but mainly felt safe because he's sure Trump is going to lose anyway. (And Minnesota last republican winner for president was Nixon 1972)

Incidentally that also reminds me how Jesse Ventura was elected Governor in 1998 under Ross Perot's Reform party. People were pissed off and didn't believe he could win.

So if the "pissed off" vote can hit critical mass, who knows if we won't have a President Trump despite ourselves. The more Trump can convince us he'll never win, the more safe all the last-minute undecided voters will feel to vote for him.

Democracy, like war, perhaps requires ruthlessness, during the campaign at least, but what we don't yet know is whether democracy and war require self-discipline, by candidates, citizens, generals, and soldiers alike.

You'd think self-discipline is important, but Trump can prove us wrong.

Anonymous said...

First excellent step occurs via the 22nd Amendment when gay, Muslim, affirmative action POTUS leaves office. Then we can truly name the enemy (Islam)and begin to seriously fight back, while ridding ourselves of that pestilence referred to as "the Bar"!

AesopFan said...

Interesting commentary here.
http://neoneocon.com/2016/07/01/cruz-vs-jeh-johnson-on-islamic-terrorism/#comments

I supported Cruz in the primaries, but I'm not sure he isn't more effective where he is.
The general campaign is going to be a real circus.

edutcher said...

IOW Peters is a Trump supporter.

Suzy Parker said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.