Wars are supposed to be declared by Congress but for some reason that rigorous formality designed to keep us from getting bogged down in endless foreign entanglements has been replaced by something else, the Attention Deficit Doctrine. To avoid the nasty reality of fighting a real war, we just never declare war and that way, when we lose interest in killing and dying and spending money, we just go onto somethig else. Nothing ever really gets decided or accomplished, except for the poltical careers of the Presidents in charge at the time.
Arguably the worst and last "real war" America fought was World War II. We were fighting the Axis powers on three fronts; Japan, Italy and Germany, all of which had the most advanced military machines in history at that time. They had strong industrial and economic bases and resources. Japan controlled most of the Pacific and Asia and Germany and Italy controlled all of Europe, half of Russia, North Africa and the Mediterranean and parts of the Middle East and were closing in on the United Kingdom.It took America a mere 4 and a half years to defeat all three Axis countries, destroy their ability and will to fight, bring them to the peace table and bring peace and prosperity to the World..... for awhile. It had a definite beginning and a definite end. Congress declared war on them and they on us. Once we destroyed them, they signed a peace treaty. It was over.
Compare that scenario to Afghanistan. We have been engaged militarily in Afghanistan since 2001 , a 3rd world country with no organized army, no air force or navy, no industry, no infrastructure and a barely organized government of our own creation. We went there after 9/11 to remove the Taliban and kill or capture Osama bin Laden. 8.5 years later we have not accomplished either objective. We have the most advanced military the world has ever seen and our technological advantage is vastly superior to anything the enemy can muster, and yet we cannot even achieve our limited objectives, let alone defeat this pathetic 3rd World country.
Everyone calls the Afghan adventure a war and yet by comparison to real wars, it barely classifies as a decent police action, except in terms of the money spent to conduct it. Our own government is paralyzed by political correctness to the point they can’t even name the real enemy or use the term terrorist. They’ve quit referring to the “war” on terrorism, which is what got us there in the first place. Yet, they continue to fund the un-war in Afghanistan as if it were just something they are obligated to do but can’t say exactly why. Forget about the fact that it is becoming a worse quagmire than Vietnam, with no achievable goal and no visible end in sight, we simply can no longer afford to continue it! We are $13 trillion in debt with no way to repay it, EVER! We sure as hell can't afford to be throwing more borrowed money at a so-called war with nothing or very little left to gain even if we could ever figure out a way to honorably extract ourselves.
The grim reality is that the minute we leave that wasteland, if we ever do, it will immediately fall back into the hands of the war lords and Taliban or whatever group of tyrannical misfits and murderers that controlled it before we arrived. So what if it did? Even if we could somehow, someday completely destroy every last vestige of terrorist scumbag making ability in that hell hole, and turn it into a thriving clone of America with a McDonalds on every corner, there are about a hundred other places around the World just dying to take it’s place as the center of terrorism. That is the undeniable reality that is facing us and yet is totally missing from the discussion.
Afghanistan, however, is not the only un-war we have been engaged in for a protracted period of time, upon which we have spent huge amounts of national treasure and lives and which turned out badly or not at all. Vietnam comes to mind, as does Korea and Iraq but the list is quite long.
Congress never declared war on North Korea. That un-war was fought to a stalemate and continues to this day, locked in a stare down across the 38th parallel where it all began in 1950. The Korean "conflict" or "police action" as it was called for lack of a formal declaration of war, actually grew out of the end of the 2nd World War when Korea was divided by the United Nations between North and South Korea. The North, supported by Communist China, invaded the South and the fight was on. Our involvement with the United Nations and our presumed position as the World's policeman sucked us into that deadly, unwinnable tar baby. We are still there today, manning the 38th parallel, waiting for North Korea, still supported by Communist China and now equipped with nuclear capabilities, to come pouring back across it, just like they did in 1950.
Congress never declared war in Vietnam. The Nixon administration at least negotiated a signed so-called peace agreement that was more like a cease fire so we could cut and run. Of course, the agreement was immediately violated by the Communists because they hadn‘t been beaten, so the un-war was not ended by the un-treaty. The US Congress was controlled by the Democrats in 1973 and they refused to fund the war they had started. In essence, the Democrats gave up and allowed that "un-war" to be un-lost. They were more interested in bringing down the Nixon presidency at the time and the country was more interested in smoking pot and free love. We didn't lose the war. We just lost interest in it, thus establishing the Attention Deficit Doctrine.... Foreign Policy by ADD.
We’re still in Iraq and while I believe it was a necessary venture and a huge success at first, we can’t seem to find that peace table, sign the treaty and get the hell out yet. Why? Because it too was not a real war. Congress never declared war so it can’t declare an end to it. How do you say the war is over if you never declared it started, against whom and for what reason? We just went there, congress funded it and gave it their tacit approval, our boys died, we hung the bad guy but now we’re stuck in this endless tar baby limbo of indecisive political mumbo jumbo called “nation building“. We can’t leave and we can’t stay. We can’t win but we can’t lose. If we have a legitimate reason to keep our forces there, and I believe an argument can be made for that, let’s use that strategic position to launch an invasion of the Islamic terrorist World and get it over with. Let’s get it on and win this war with Islam, once and for all. Otherwise, let’s just withdraw into our shell and wait for them to invade us. Sooner or later it’s going to happen. At least then we will be justified in declaring real all out war against a real enemy. We either fight to win or we will all die. It’s as simple as that.
The lesson to all of this is that if we are going to engage in military action of any kind, we need to have a formal declaration of war. We need a real enemy that we can name, demonize, destroy and then come home. Otherwise, stay the hell out of it.
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