Horrible

There is no way to describe the terrorists attacks we are seeing, except as horrible.  There is nothing redeeming about it.  There is nothing logical, or understandable about it.  There is nothing redemptive or uplifting about it.  There is nothing about it but horror.

These are evil men.  I don't know if they are born evil.  I don't know if their religion turns them evil.  I don't know if society turns them evil.  I don't care.

It does not matter what makes these men evil, they just are evil.  And there is only one way to deal with evil men in the world.  Those actions are past me now.  I am become an old man, in terms of dealing with this scourge of terrorism.  Were I able, I would be there, doing something about this.

It does not matter to me what babbling goes on about whether or not Islam is the source of evil, or a peaceful religion perverted by ideologs. I do not care even the least bit, what anyone thinks justifies this activity, what generates this kind of evil.  I don't care what color their skin is.  I don't care what language they speak.  I don't care what their background is.

I don't care even a little bit about their concerns, their desires, their goals, their issues.  I would not even begin to discuss it with anyone.  It is immaterial and wasteful to discuss in terms of dealing with these issues.  I have said it before, and I will say it again, there needs to be a general like Sherman, or Grant, or Sheridan, or Ridgeway, or Gavin, or Clark, or McArthur, or Patton, or Bradley.  A fighting general, a general that has the wherewithal and stones, regardless of their sex, to go kill people who only understand killing.

We did not beat the Nazis because we tried understanding them, or we worried about separating the good Germans from the bad Germans.  We did not defeat the Japanese because we gave a crap about their cause or aims.  We just shot them, bombed them, burned them and killed them in whatever number they presented to us.  And we kept at it until they surrendered unconditionally and completely.

For those of you that have not served, or have not studied military history, there is no easy, clean or decent way to wage war.  War is ugly, bloody, deadly and horrific.  There is but one way to win a war.  You have to go strangle, cut, shoot, beat, kick, spit, burn, scratch, poison, choke and stomp the enemy when they are in front of you.  And if they are not in front of you, you go to where they are and commence waging war.

Sherman is alternately vilified and revered, sometimes by the same historians.  He understood and applied a liberal form of war of maneuver to the tools of modern warfare.  He did not focus on solely where the army of the enemy was, he destroyed the ability of the enemy to wage war.  He did not focus on one aspect of the war, he went where there was the most damage to do, economically, militarily and emotionally, and enforced his will on his opponents.  He left them unable to do anything but capitulate.

Grant threw thousands of men, after thousands of men, after thousands of men against Lee, backing him remorselessly into a tighter and tighter noose of maneuver.  He drove him to Petersburg, then to Richmond then west to Appomattox. He did not waver, he did not shrink from it.  He did not do anything but trudge forward, hammering his opponent day after day.  It was bloody, it was horrific, and it was exactly what was required for the warfare being practiced.

What do we learn from these men?  We learn that war is total, or it is futile.  War is complete, or it is futile.  War is fought above the level of brutality of your enemy, or you are going to lose.  War is the decision that it is preferable to drop a nuclear bomb and kill hundreds of thousands, than lose many multiples of that number of your own troops, invading.  War is never being sorry for that decision, whether you ever take pride in it or not.  Saving the lives of your men, at the expense of the lives of your enemy is a trade you will make every day, if you are going to wage war and win.

War is not a partial endeavor, or a limited effort, or a measured response.  If you are in a war, and decide not to fight a war, you are going to continue to suffer losses, casualties and misery.  After 30 years following Reagan, we have lost sight of that maxim.  It is my considered opinion that the Soviets did not do any more during the Cold War, because they understood that the men in the White House would wage war against them, with all the tools and weaponry at their disposal, until they were defeated.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have had pipsqueak Presidents and false narratives.  We have continually decided to limit our involvement, shepherd our response, dilute our capabilities.  Why don't coalitions bring much difference to the table?  None of them can fight war on the scale and breadth that America can, except Russia and China.  It is commendable that the French, Belgian, British and German military participate, but they are not key components or needed resources.

It is not muscle flexing to destroy the entity that attacks you.  It is considered warfare.  Warfare that we are afraid to fight and scared to wage.  We have come to the conclusion that we can fight a clean war, against an enemy that lives intertwined with the "peaceful innocents".  They shelter them, they provide for them, they hide them, they lie for them, they protect them and they support them.  They are not neutral parties.  Anymore than the civilians that worked in the Japanese and German war effort were neutral parties.  They were participants, and had to be defeated just as the military had to be defeated.

What Sherman, Marshall, Nimitz, Patton, Alexander, Montgomery, all understood was that only forcible subjugation would defeat the enemy.  We did not do this in Korea, or Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iraq again, or in Syria/Lybia/Egypt currently.  Because of that, the results were muddy, unclear, non-permanent and transient.  It was not worth the loss of life and treasure to have attempted the feat, only to give back gains and limit the extent to which we prosecute the effort.

Belgium is faced with a huge quandary.  What do they do?  They know where the trouble lives.  They know that it is protected, supplied and supported by the inhabitants of that community.  They know that to do anything meaningful, they will have to face world wide condemnation.  In the European calculus, it is preferable to have occasional attacks, than it is to root out and destroy the cancer growing within.

That is their deal.  More power to them, and France and Germany.  But, here in America, we need to heed these events and take these lessons.  If you are not willing to destroy the source of evil, you are tacitly approving that evil.  Eventually, it will become unbearable and unsustainable, and we will unite and defeat this evil.  I have no doubt that evil will not triumph.  Our shared history shows that evil collapses into the corruption it breeds.  Men and women of good conscience stand up, unite and strike down the forces of evil.

I hope that we study the last one hundred years of our history, it is still less than one hundred years since the conclusion of WWI.  If we do not soon understand what it will take to defeat this enemy, that we must take the fight to where they are, that we must harden our hearts and wage war against their entire war making machine, the entire community wrapped up in their effort and successes, we are not going to win.

It is ugly, there is nothing glorious or commendable about war.  That does not mean, if you wish to remain free and secure, you do not have to occasionally climb down into the trenches and go at it with the enemy.  If you are unwilling to do so, you will not defeat them, you will never win.

War is hell.  It is, and we are living in it, at the hands of evil and vile men and women, possessed of an evil outlook of the world, and approach to life.  They are not indicative of anything but evil and murder.  They are not justified because of economy.  They are not justified because of persecution.  They are not justified because of history.  They are murderers, rapists, barbarian and cold hearted.  The only way to defeat people like that is to hammer them with the very thing they understand.  You have to be resolved to win, and demonstrate it daily and totally.

Eventually, we will figure this out, and hopefully it will not be too late.  Europe is burning already.  The Mid East has blazed for half a century.  And it is creeping into Russia and America.  Why is it not happening in China?  They will do what the Soviets used to do.  They will wage war that these evil bastards understand.  And they will do it until they win.  We are not considered to be that force anymore, and it should be shameful for every American that we have lost that.

It is not cruel or disproportionate to go crush your enemy that attacks your land.  We did not wonder at the viewpoint of the world when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  We lost less Americans, and less total value, at Pearl Harbor, than we did on 9/11.  Yet, here we sit, wondering what measured and careful response we can make.

We better be careful and measure every inch of that viper's nest that is breeding this evil.  Then we better go make it so that these people do not ever decide to try the resolve of the United States again.  Because we refuse to go where the head of this snake lives, because we refuse to cut it off and chop up the body, we are going to continue to accept this life that we live now.

Freedom is always a razor's edge.  Evil hates freedom, because it cannot fathom it, cannot stomach it, and cannot overcome it.  When freedom stops hating evil, and acting on it, it is lost forever.  History is full of evidence to prove this.  I hope we are not another chapter of teaching, that did not learn its lesson soon enough.

The object can no longer be to keep Americans safe, it has to be making sure America wins.  That is the choice in war.  You can fight it or you can try to stay safe.  Safe is relative, war is not.  Safe is subjective, war is not.  You cannot be relatively at war, but you can be relatively safe.  Safety is overrated and much less valuable than winning.  The best key to safety is to defeat the enemy in front of you.

War is hell.  Better to spend some time in hell to defeat evil, than sentence ourselves to an unending cycle of it.

GLYASDI