Fighting to Win Wars from Planck's Constant

STOP HIM AND THE JOB'S DONE - U.S. Army Official Poster

U.S. Army Official Poster
Photo Credit: SFSU

Before World War I there were no posters on American walls asking for the destruction of Germany. Before World War II very few Americans cared about the Japanese one way or another. Once we were at War, no one found it offensive that we portrayed our enemy as a subhuman that should be utterly destroyed. You cannot win a war being a nice guy.

It was in fact the ultimate act of kindness that we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Had we been forced instead to invade Japan, millions more Japanese would have died.

Unfortunately the modern world we live in has been infected with pussy-disease; the notion that we can fight faint-heartedly and hope the enemy surrenders when they see how nice we are. It is the same disease with which Obama is infected. If only we could let our enemy know that we don't wish to fight, that we're willing to negotiate, then we can have true peace.

But our enemies know that we are pussies and so they can invade any country they wish because Americans are too nice to fight dirty. I happen to like the Soviet Doctrine which stresses the principle of "annihilation" of the enemy in depth (contrasted with mere defeat of the enemy leading to retirement or retreat). The Russians invaded Georgia without worrying about any American response because they knew there wouldn't be any, other than stern words. The Liberals in America had so demoralized our country over Iraq that Bush could not confidently demand that Russia stop its invasion or else.

The pussies in Congress made sure that there was no fear in our "or else".

I have written quite a number of times that it is morally wrong to fight a war nicely, worrying about civilian casualties. From my article WWIII:

WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?

What if the universalist idea of liberal democracy - the idea that all people are created equal - has sunk in so deeply that we no longer assign special value to the lives and interests of our own people as opposed to those in other countries?

What if this triumph of universalism is demonstrated by the Left’s insistence that American and Israeli military actions marked by an extraordinary concern for preventing civilian casualties are in fact unacceptably brutal? And is also apparent in the Right’s claim that a war against a country has nothing to do with the people but only with that country’s leaders?

Can any war be won when this is the nature of the discussion in the countries fighting the war? Can any war be won when one of the combatants voluntarily limits itself in this manner?

But finally I hear the voice of reason, someone that advocates fighting a war to win. (I missed this when it first was published):

Ynet News, 22 Jun 2006, Morality requires: Hurt hostile population
The Qassams are blasting away at Sderot, and a group of well-meaning professors and authors are shouting about the defense establishment about shooting at the terrorists and signing declarations entitled "Would you kill the righteous with the sinner?", a reference to the biblical Abraham's plea with God not to destroy the city of Sodom.

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What is the source of such morals? Is there any country in the world that wouldn't respond with non-focused artillery fire? Does anyone really think the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany or Belgium would resign itself to such a never-ending barrage and not respond sharply and unilaterally?

Absurd

The absurdity of it all screams out to the heavens when the "world is silent" about the storm of Qassams on a peaceful Israeli city, yet cries out to demand a commission of inquiry over an Arab family killed on the Gaza beach. And what do you know, just like in a theater of the absurd, a group of intellectuals joins this anti-ethical chorus, and adds its own traitorous voice to stab their own nation in the back -

They have warned the government, senior IDF generals and policy makers not to arouse the anger of the world and the anti-Jewish foreign media with a too-harsh military response, so now they are silent. But this call by the so-called "enlightened" folks, for some reason called "spiritual people" ( a direct translation of the Hebrew term for humanities professors), the indirect meaning of which is the abandonment of their own people by ruling out responses that occasionally fail to hit their intended targets – failing to respond occasionally.

These people give the impression of being classic "backseat drivers," willing to let others pay with their lives so long as their "theories" can remain in tact.

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The lying international media will defend the Palestinians regardless of what Israel does, as will the Israeli left. At least we would gain back Sderot and other cities and town in the area by such a move.

And in war as in war. Civilians get hurt in war – including women, children and the elderly. Only a population that forcibly vomits out terrorists from its midst, that waves a white flag, that expresses strong protest against being dragged into violent conflict – only such a population will be protected, according to any measure of Jewish morality.

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Of course, we must warn people and allow them to escape, in accordance with halacha (Jewish law), derived from verses in the Torah. As Maimonides wrote nearly 1000 years ago: "When we lay siege to a city in order to capture it, do not encircle it on all sides. Rather, you must allow the enemy room to flee, in order to save their lives.

There will be Muslims who will purposely misread this as a call for genocide against Palestinians. But Israel would gladly live in peace if only Arabs would let them. America did not go out of its way to kill Japanese. If the Japanese had only been peaceful there would never have been a Hiroshima.