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VETERAN'S DAY THOUGHTS FROM A DISABLED VET AND FRIEND

  • As a disabled vet myself, who has seen many of his friends die in combat, I am offering these thoughts on Veterans Day.

    We are getting into too many unnecessary wars and other lesser combat actions. It is past time to stop trying to be the world's police force, and to stop trying to impose our form of western democracy on people who don't want it. If, for instance, the people of Afghanistan really want freedom from religious oppression, they must first fight for it themselves, and then ask us for limited help implementing it.

    It is time to bring our combat troops home from such places as Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We have had troops in harms way in Korea for 60 years. South Korea has long since become a major industrial and military power, and they can damned well look out for their own northern border.

    The last war we fought to win was WW2. In every action since we have sought truces or draws. We should not shed American blood for draws. We need to scrap the social engineering ongoing in the military for at least 50 years, shit-can the ridiculous rules of engagement (ROE) we impose on our combat troops, and fight every war we cannot avoid ruthlessly, so as to end it as quickly and decisively as possible and bring our troops home. Collateral damage is unavoidable. Senior commanders and JAG officers who have never been in the cauldron of combat have no business either formulating rules for warriors, or sitting in judgement on those warriors for their actions.

    We need to rebuild our intelligence arm, systematically gutted by the Carter and Clinton administrations, to a level of capability that will enable us to accurately determine where our real threats lie. This is absolutely essential if we are to reduce the size of our standing military and rely more on our reserve components. The Iraq War was a result of poor strategic intelligence more than a scheme to acquire Iraqi oil hatched in Houston. BTW, our intelligence forces exist to determine and neutralize our real enemies, not win domestic political contests.

    War is nasty; brutal; vicious. It cannot be anything else, and attempts to dilute its effects in an attempt to make it somehow more palatable are counterproductive exercises, preordained to failure.

    My last thought is that our military is but the tool of the civilian government. When we elect dishonest, corrupt and incompetent civilian leaders, we guarantee that our military will not be the effective policy arm that it is meant to be.
    By Michael Wilson, retired disabled veteran and an admired friend

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