When was the last time we fought a war to win?

The US has been a number of major wars since WW2.  Korea, Viet Nam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq.  None of the wars since WW2 were fought like the Second World War.  In Korea, and Viet Nam the objective was to tie.  Afghanistan was basically an anti-insurgency combined with the mistaken dream that you could take a barbarian 13th century culture and bring it forward 700 years without first defeating it.  Iraq was turned into a "nation building" exercise even as our soldier were being killed.  In no war since WW2 has American military power been used to utterly crush the enemy; a major departure from our wars against Germany and Japan.  And each has been at best a holding pattern and at worst a miserable failure.

Michael Walsh

But the very fact that Afghanistan is now America’s longest war — and is slated to end in ignominy in 2014 — ought to be a profound source of shame both for the Pentagon and its civilian masters across the Potomac. The Taliban was quickly routed after 9/11 by a platoon of Marines and a set of steak knives, and the American forces since have distinguished themselves on the battlefield, tactically. But strategically — that’s a different story. Thanks to a total lack of understanding of the meaning of the word “victory,” a failure to finish the job– a failure of will — has been the hallmark of both administrations.

When American entered WWII, it had to think both tactically — how to win any given battle — and strategically — how to annihilate the enemy so that his will to fight and his capacity to wage war were both reduced to zero. Fewer than four years later, Germany lay in complete ruins, its cities bombed to rubble, its army defeated, its chancellor dead in his bunker. Two of Japan’s cities were atomized, Tokyo (like Dresden) was firebombed, the Rising Sun’s Empire was dissolved and its emperor barely escaped the noose from which dangled his prime minister, Tojo, and six others.

That’s because FDR, his cabinet and his generals understood the urgency and necessity of total victory via total war. And, indeed, we’ve long since seen the end of the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan. Tactically, we won some (Midway) and we lost some (Bataan); some, like the Coral Sea, were tactical defeats that led to a larger strategic victory. And strategic victories — not body counts, pacified villages or friendly tribal elders — are what count in war.

And yet, almost from the start for the so-called “War on Terror,” it was clear that the U.S. would not have the will prosecute the war the way Roosevelt and Eisenhower would have — to go right to the heart of the enemy and destroy him. The Japanese had to be violently disabused of the notion that their emperor was a god; the Germans had to have it explained to them in the plainest possible English that the Fuehrerprinzip was headed to the ashcan of history with a bullet in its head.. Equally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Islamists were in dire need of an attitudinal readjustment regarding their motivational superstitions as well — one even more dispositive than Tours, Lepanto, Vienna, or Omdurman. You become friends with your enemies after you’ve thrashed them, not offering them cups of tea while you’re still fighting them.

But this is where the evil scourge of political correctness must always lead: to a policy of suicidal defenselessness, thus illustrating Robert Frost’s famous dictum that a liberal is a man “too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel.” Sympathy for the devil is an unmistakable sign of weakness to those blessed cultures, otherwise benighted, who never adopted the decadent intellectual charlatanism that seeks blame within and recognizes no external moral authority outside the self. And after more than a decade of Bush and Obama warfighting doctrine — which has basically amounted to “hit ‘em where they ain’t” — we have now arrived at this unhappy place ...

Despite a list of failures, there seems to be no desire on the part of the political establishment to fight wars to win; to impose our will on a defeated enemy because our cause is just. In war if you don't win, you lose. If you have the power to destroy your enemy but your enemy believes you'll pull your punches, help him up to fight again, that's immoral. There is no justification for this. It demonstrates a basic lack of serious purpose and encourages wars where people who wish to do harm believe they can get away with it.