Jac VerSteeg
Prepare for disaster.
I’m not saying America can’t win the war against Islamic extremism – embodied at this point in history by the Islamic State. But war is not a series of inspiring victories. War is a series of dispiriting calamities. Think Black Hawk down in Somalia. Think the USS Stark off the coast of Saudi Arabia. Think Fallujah in Iraq. Think Benghazi in Libya.
And that is true even for the victors. In the haze of history, Americans have forgotten – or never heard about – major defeats and disasters of World War II. Pick just two “small” ones:
Ever heard of Operation Tiger? It was the 1944 dress rehearsal for D-Day, carried out on the shores of Britain. It killed nearly 1,000 American troops when German warships stumbled on the dummy landing, a disaster compounded by “friendly fire” from the beach.
Ever heard of the Chicago Port Disaster? That was the 1944 munitions explosion that killed 320 sailors and civilians and injured a similar number and sparked a huge “Mutiny” trial.
Then there’s Vietnam which, like George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, often is considered to be one gigantic disaster. But there are people who maintain that Vietnam and Iraq could have been won militarily if America had just stuck with it. That sentiment concerning Iraq is true among many current Republican candidates for president who blame President Barack Obama and, of course, Hillary Clinton for pulling troops out of Iraq “too soon,” allegedly leading to the rise of ISIS.
The assumption is that if American troops had stayed, they would not have found themselves the targets of relentless attacks and the focus of enormously successful jihadist recruiting drives. No, they would have enjoyed a largely peaceful occupation in which Iraq would have subsided into a placid democracy. That is the joy of alternative history. It can’t be disproved.
That also is a benefit of “future history,” which allows candidates to say that they have the skills to lead America to military victory over radical Islam – and will prove it once elected on the basis of their promise of prowess.
Perhaps they could. But none could do it without suffering defeats and disasters that would give their critics license to say about a President Jeb Bush or President Donald Trump or President Ben Carson or President Marco Rubio exactly the kinds of things that critics say now about President Obama and former Secretary of State Clinton.
For every bloody disaster – from Pearl Harbor to Paris – there are geniuses who will tell you how it could have been prevented. If only we had enough geniuses to actually prevent them.
We don’t.
Perhaps we should put tens of thousands of boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and Iran and wherever else it becomes necessary. Perhaps that would enable us to win the war against radical Islam. But even if it could, it certainly cannot be done without enduring a string of epic disasters, setbacks and outright defeats. Those I’ve listed are a paltry few. It would take entire books to catalog the disasters, setbacks and defeats of the wars America won, much less Vietnam and Iraq.
What is the evidence that America is capable of enduring to victory through such a roster of calamities? Are we waiting for the war against Islamic extremists to come to our shores? It already did, on 9/11/2001. How long did our unity last? How wisely did we prosecute the war then?
We have no draft – let the volunteers die while we go to the enormous sacrifice of turning on a green light to make ourselves feel like we’re supporting them. We do not pay for our wars – what, and increase a tax? When there is a disaster, we exploit it for the politics – Benghazi, anyone?
And please explain how we can win this war or even make progress when huge swaths of our population despise the commander in chief and intend to continue despising him – no matter what – until noon on Jan. 20, 2017. And then, should a Democrat get elected, they intend to despise that commander in chief until they can get him or her impeached.
The deaths of Osama bin Laden and Jihadi John – and countless other strikes against extremists – don’t seem to count. If there is an attack in Paris, it is America’s do-nothing president who is to blame.
The critics want boots-on-the-ground war. Nothing short of that can win the war, they insist. And maybe they’re right. But be honest with us. Don’t just tell us the war will be “long.” Tell us that boots on the ground mean bodies on the ground. American bodies. Lots of them. Those who commit us to such a war – and all of us in America – had better be ready to withstand the bloody path to victory.
Now, we are not.
Jac Wilder VerSteeg is a columnist for The South Florida Sun Sentinel, former deputy editorial page editor for The Palm Beach Post and former editor of Context Florida.
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