Americans Learning French Ways?

HAVE we lost the will to win wars? Not just in Iraq, but anywhere? Do we really believe that being nice is more important than victory?...It's hard enough to bear the timidity of our civilian leaders - anxious to start wars but without the guts to finish them - but now military leaders have fallen prey to political correctness. Unwilling to accept that war is, by its nature, a savage act and that defeat is immoral, influential officers are arguing for a kinder, gentler approach to our enemies...They're going to lead us into failure, sacrificing our soldiers and Marines for nothing: Political correctness kills....Politically Correct War, Ralph Peters, New York Post, 10/18/2006

In certain lounges in the Southwest and California, a good way to get into a barfight is to start a conversation about the Montagnards. Who were they? For a decade, they were probably the fiercest allies that America has ever had. From villages in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, sparsely equipped by US intelligence agencies, they outfought divisions of Viet Cong and of North Vietnamese regulars. In 1973, after a decade of promises, terrible losses, meager supplies, astonishing victories, and a fighting spirit unmatched anywhere else in that war, the Montagnards were abandoned by the United States. Some became "boat people", part of the hundreds of thousands who fled Vietnam. A lot were slaughtered. Many were imprisoned. Their abandonment was the most disgraceful episode in a disgraceful war. The Montagnards were dropped, as many other U.S. allies have been over the past fifty years, because it wasn't politically suitable to have them around a negotiating table. Now, as Ralph Peters analyzes things today, it's going to get a lot worse. Political correctness now infects the thinking of combat officers; the pathology that is gutting the excellence of our universities has crossed over into the military. But should we be surprised?

Ever since 9/11, the lies of the Left, of Islamic fascists (and their friends among "charitable" organizations in the United States), have been an unending drum beat shouting out a consistent message, that anything that we do to resist Islamic terror is unjust, an "imperial" delusion. Lies are nothing new in politics. The same people, or their red diaper baby parents, were telling the same lies forty years ago. And reporting lies as truth is nothing new in media. What's telling is that more and more of us believe the lies. Why?

We believe in lies when we want them to represent the truth. A majority of us now want to believe that the war on terror, and the war on Iraq, are lost. They're too much of a distraction from gasoline prices, or mortgage payments, or bills for kids in school, or our wish to try the latest variation on bread and circuses offered in video games, the movies, and television. And they're too brutal; they're not like Saturday morning cartoons or Hollywood ending movies, where everybody gets up off the floor at the end and kisses. And it's unfair to blame the French, whose country was called the "whore of Europe" for decades after its surrender-first policies in World War II. It's not like we don't know about them. A lot of our fathers died because of Pierre Laval and his ilk in the pre-World War II French Republic's abject failures before the Nazis. It's not the Left, as much as they would like us to believe so. Most people can tell that Lynne Stewart and Al Franken are full of crap. No, we have to face the mirror. It's us. We're the ones advocating surrender. We're the ones who want "gentle" war. We're the ones who want nature to reflect the vision of Walt Disney instead of that of Charles Darwin.

But not to place the blame entirely on the electorate, it's also a leadership unwilling to call for the real sacrifices required to win a conflict whose loss will cost the West any claim to lead the world. This is a writer who's not fooled by a White House that rages on about "staying the course" without bothering to proclaim a national emergency and act as if the nation were actually at war. And this is also a writer who's not fooled by a Secretary of Defense more interested in management prerogatives than what an Army on the ground actually needs to operate. We've had a Defense Secretary like this before. His name was Robert MacNamara. This latest product of Secretary Rumsfeld's imagination says far more about him than any of his allegedly stalwart stands against generals outraged at having to send ill-equipped, outnumbered divisions into action.

Something to think about as election day approaches....

Luther