Meat grinder and search-and-destroy strategies.  The goal simply was to pound the enemy into submission.  The Pentagon called this strategy the “meat grinder,” which was supposed to be achieved through massive bombing of North Vietnam and “search-and-destroy” missions in the south that would root out the National Liberation Front (NLF) and eradicate them with U.S. Air Power.  The hope was that this strategy would buy time for the Saigon government to become a viable political and military entity.2  Does this not sound like the Iraq government?  After nearly a decade of attempting to make the Iraq government a viable political and military entity, when push came to shove, the Iraqi Army dropped their weapons and retreated for their lives from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) forces.  What a joke!

Discard war of attrition strategy.  Never take the “war of attrition” approach.  The United States foolishly did that in Vietnam.  Now, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, although started out correctly, have transitioned into wars of attrition.  Gen. Westmoreland designed the war of attrition strategy to meat-grind-down the enemy forces.  However, this “war of attrition” in Afghanistan and Iraq grinds down our own warfighters…one soldier at a time.  You do not want a war of attrition to go that way.  The American public will not stand for it.  Thus, either turn those wars over totally to the generals or get our troops out of there!  Fighting those wars the way we are doing today is both ludicrous and insane!

Let the Generals Run the War

Turn it over to the generals.  When we go to war, we should turn it over to the generals to run.  Generals train to fight and win wars.  Do not use them as puppets to perform for politicians as puppeteers holding onto the strings.  Do not tie one of their arms behind their backs (or tear it off as depicted by the cartoon above) and expect them to win the fight.  Give them all the resources, latitude, authority, and power to wage and win the war.  If you are not willing to do that, then do not go to war in the first place!

Only order is to go win the war.  Sun Tzu said, “In war, the general receives his commands from the sovereign.”  In the United States, the sovereign is the president (POTUS) or the commander-in-chief (CINC).  However, in today’s ISIS environment, the president should give only one command to the top general or, in our case, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  That command should be this: “Go win the war by any means possible.”  That is it!  Let the Joint Chiefs of Staff figure out what to do and how to win the war.  All politicians should stay out of their way and let them do their job the best way they know how to do it.  If they do not win the war in 12 months, replace them with better generals who can and will accomplish the mission in the shortest time possible.

Politicians Stay Out of It!

Vietnam War.  No single politician or group of politicians should be involved in directing the war.  Keep them out of it!  They are the ones who have screwed up past wars and got our war-fighters unnecessarily killed by the tens and hundreds of thousands.  Presidents Kennedy and Johnson screwed up the Vietnam War.  President Nixon campaigned and won on the policy of Vietnamization of the Vietnam War.  However, after Nixon resigned the presidency, President Ford had to take the retreat tactic, pull out, and lose the Vietnam War.  The Vietnam War unnecessarily killed over 47,000 warfighters.  What a waste of valuable human life!

World War II.  President Truman made the right decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which abruptly ended the war in the Pacific after the Nagasaki drop.  However, President Truman made the mistake of stopping General George S. Patton, Jr., from fighting the Russians as Patton had desired.  He also made the mistake of stopping General Douglas MacArthur from taking our troops across the Yalu River and attacking the Red Chinese.  If Truman had allowed those two generals to implement these strategies, as they should have, we would not have had the frapping Cold War!

Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.  President George W. Bush made the wrong decisions in fighting the Afghanistan War and Iraq War as were done in Vietnam.  He started these wars correctly with carpet bombing and massive force.  However, as time went on, we turned wimpy.  We should have wiped out all insurgents when we had the chance.  Instead, we are now experiencing another “war of attrition” of our warfighters!

Turn wars over to the generals.  President Bush should have turned over to the generals (i.e., Joint Chiefs of Staff) the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and personally stay out of it.  Let them fight and win those wars and then bring our troops home where they belong.  Whatever it takes to win those wars, they should do.  General George S. Patton said, “Sure, we want to go home.  We want this war over with.  The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it.”  Then, President Barack Obama entered the scene.  He did the foolish thing by adopting the same strategies and tactics of the GWB administration, which is a war of attrition of our own troops!  Stupid is as stupid does. ~ Forrest Gump

Fight to win the war on terrorism.  It is no wonder the Democrats and secular progressives (SPs) were dead against these wars as well as the “War on Terrorism” during President Bush’s tenure.  It is no wonder the North Koreans are spitting in our collective faces.  It is no wonder the Iranians have scoffed at the UN resolutions and badmouth the United States.  Then, President Obama pulled our forces out of Iraq without implementing a status of forces agreement with the Iraq government.  With his feckless approach to fighting wars, it is no wonder we are experiencing all kinds of terrorist acts being committed all over the world.  If we are going to fight a war on terror, let us fight to WIN the War on Terror!  However, according to the Obama administration, we do not have a War on Terror.  Instead, we have just Overseas Contingency Operations (OCOs), whatever that is?

War is Against People

When we fight a war, we fight people.  We cannot effectively wage a war and win when we fight against an idea, an ideology, a concept, an “-ism,” an inanimate object, land, an infrastructure, animals, plants, and any other such ridiculous things.  In other words, we cannot fight and win a war against drugs, against poverty, or against terrorism.  There will be no end to them unless and until we change our paradigm to make them a war on specific people—the bad folks.  In our current situation, we must fight a War on ISIS and win by killing off every single one of them.

War on drugs.  The War on Drugs continues and never seems to have an end or conclusion.  Until we change the War on Drugs to the War on Drug Dealers, War on Drug Pushers, War on Drug Addicts, War on Drug Cartels, War on Drug Traffickers, or War on Drug Smugglers, nothing positive will happen to win that war.  You win the War on Drugs only when you knock off (one-by-one) all those who are illicitly participating in advancing the manufacture, sale, and use of drugs for money.

War on poverty.  Likewise, the War on Poverty rages on for years and years, and there is no end in sight.  The War on Poverty will always exist until we change its designation to one or more of the following:

• War for educating poor people

• War on those who attempt to keep poor people on the figurative plantation

• War on extreme left-wing SPs who advance hand-out (entitlement) programs

We can never win the war on poverty.  By definition, you cannot eradicate poverty.  As long as we have the rich, we will always have the poor.  As long as we have the “haves,” we will have the “have-nots.”  Hence, by definition, we will never eliminate the poor.  However, we can make things better for the poor by educating them, increasing the overall economic pie, and outlawing those who attempt to keep the poor on the figurative plantation.

War on terrorism.  The same argument applies to the War on Terror.  It is no different with the War on Terrorism.  We must change that paradigm to the War on Terrorists, War with al-Qaeda, War with the Taliban, War with Hezbollah, War with Hamas, and/or War on Islamo-fascists.  You need not fight a country or nation to go to war.  We can go to war with an organization, a group of people, and members of an ideological party.  We need to start knocking off Islamo-fascists one by one until our work is finished.  These groups represent a finite number of human bodies.  Hence, that tactic will work.

One at a Time

Our poodle dogs do not have any fleas because we have killed them one flea at a time.  Terrorists are no different than fleas.  We just need to knock them off one terrorist at a time.  In addition, we need not make any fanfare about it either like how Obama danced in the end zone after assassinating Osama bin Laden.  We need not brag about our accomplishments.  We just snuff them out quietly, deliberately, and consistently.  Finally, one day, we will get up, and there will be no terrorists (or fleas) left.  Isn’t that too bad?

World War III?

We do not need to call the War on Islamo-fascists as World War III.  We do not need to call it as we did the Korean War, Vietnam War, or Gulf War.  Unless we went to war with Iran, we do not need to go to war with a country.  We simply can go to war with a group of people such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas, or Islamo-fascists.

References

¹ Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Four Hours in My Lai (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 32.

² Ibid.

Note: This article is a sequential one to my August 24, 2014, article titled “ISIS Pre-War Considerations.”  You can access that article at /contributor/pages/7/162/stories.html