Get their Attention... First!!!

Minimalist Wars are Made to Lose!

I am furious that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised Lebanon 30 million dollars to help rebuild that county’s infrastructure!

Why?

Look, if Lebanon had the testicular fortitude of 4-year-old boy, they would have been out there, in boondocks, at least TRYING to root out Hizbollah. But, no, they don’t do that. They sit on their hands; allow themselves to be intimidated by a bunch of armed hoodlums, and wait for Israel to save their sorry asses! Then they turn right around and “hate” Israel and the US… as always!

Oh, come on, folks! The Moslems, we have learned, are afraid of their own shadows. They will attack from ambush, or set off bombs in locations with high concentrations of civilians, and even stoop to killing their own civilians, and swear, to the press, that either the Israelis did it, or the Americans did it! Does that sound like brave people to you? If it does, you have a warped sense of bravery, and NO sense of honor, at all.

You know, the more familiar I become with that area of the world, and the peoples of that area of the world, the more I become convinced that Saddam Hussein was on to something. Granted he was a dictator. But he kept those people under control. He used raw fear.

The US is attempting to us tender loving care… and it ain’t working!

Reminds me of the old tale of the farmer who was searching for a new mule to plow with. He inquired at another farm, where he had seen a sign declaring the farmer there had a mule for sale. As the prospective buyer looked the mule over, he asked how the mule responded to orders. The owner of the mule said the mule responded well, but you had to use tender loving care to get the mule to respond at peak performance. If you did that the mule was up to any task. Asked by the buyer to demonstrate, the owner hitched the mule to a plowshare and snapped the reins over the mules back and commanded “gid-UP”. The mule didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch. Three times the owner repeated the command and the mule didn’t move. Finally the owner stepped over to a pile of cast off wood scraps, picked up a four foot section of 2 x 4 and, swinging it with all his might, smacked the mule right between the eyes! The astounded buyer shouted: “I thought you said the mule would respond to tender loving care!” The owner replied: “He will. But you got to get his attention first!”

The kernel of truth in that old story can be applied to the Middle Eastern Moslems. We haven’t gotten their attention yet! As long as we use the tender loving care, BEFORE the 2 x 4, we will NEVER get their attention.

Frankly, I’m not convinced that democracy will work in that part of the world. It doesn’t carry the implied threat that a strongman dictator does. Plus, I am not convinced that all people want to be free. You see free people have responsibility for themselves. Many people, on this planet, do not want to be responsible for themselves. We learned that the hard way right here in this country. We have an entire class of people who appear content to remain wards of the US government. Have we learned nothing from this? Apparently not!

The US may find that we are forced to install another strongman dictator, in power in Iraq, and forget about democracy until the Iraqis grow up.

Meanwhile, back in Lebanon, Israel’s attempt at a minimalist war is failing. If Hizbollah is given even the smallest reason to claim a victory, it will bring more death and destruction down on Israel.

When Gen. Douglas Macarthur led the US troops in Korea against the North Koreans and the Red Chinese, he had the idea that once he had driven them back across the 38th parallel he would sow the land, five miles deep, with radio active cobalt, to insure there would not be another land invasion from North Korea into South Korea. President Truman thought Mac was crazy and eventually fired him. The fact that Mac was planning to run against Truman as the Republican candidate for President in the next election had absolutely nothing to do with Truman’s decision to relieve the good general! Nothing!

Now, think about it. If Israel unloaded a few battlefield “tactical” nukes, into the area of southern Lebanon, the Hizbollah terrorist are using to launch their stove pipe missiles from, seems to me that would create a “sanitary zone”. Anything moving about in that zone would die of radiation sickness in fairly short order. It might prove a deterrent to terrorists and end the fighting in that area for many, many, years to come.

The point is… the fighting in Southern Lebanon, now, is useless. Even if Israel drives the Hizbollah back, oh, say, 20 miles, Hizbollah will simply request, and receive, longer-range missiles from Iran and/or Syria. So nothing is to be gained by simply driving the Hizbollah back. However, killing as many Hizbollah terrorists, as is possible, will certainly be looked upon, with favor, by Israelis and Americans alike.

Unfortunately, the US, and now Israel, it seems, have both bought into the lie that minimalist wars win hearts and minds. They don’t. What a minimalist war does do, however, is cause wars to drag on, and on, and in the process, cause more soldiers to die needlessly. A lightening fast, sharp as a razor, military strike followed by another, and another, until none of the enemy is left standing is the proven way to gain victory in any conflict. Lightening War, invented by the Nazis, proved it’s worth, as a war-fighting tactic, as far back as September 1st, 1939 when Hitler’s army flooded across Poland’s border and wrapped that entire country up in a matter of days.

And finally, minimalist wars are interpreted, by a hostile media, as “quagmires”.

It is apparent, and has been since the Vietnam War, the mainstream media, worldwide, is hostile to America and to Israel. Even in the US, itself, it’s own homegrown media is hostile to the US. As a result they look for any, and all, reasons to portray the US and Israel in a bad light. They jump on a minimalist war and interpret it to their readers, and viewers, as a loss for the US and for Israel. That is exactly what is happening on the front pages of the newspapers across the world, and on the TV screens around the world, today.

When America or Israel goes to war, it must gear up to fight both enemies; the ones shooting at them and the ones writing about them.

If I could offer any advice, at all, to the US government, and the Israeli government, it would be two things: Do not fight minimalist wars! Strike with overwhelming force… and do it from day one. And secondly… bar the press from the theatre of war…period! No press, no press conferences… no nothing… until the fighting is ended.

Longstreet