Whatever Happened to the Concept of Victory

Posted by Larry Miller on September 2, 2010 under How | 2 Comments to Read

When my fathers generation, the greatest generation, conquered the Axis powers, there was no question: the only goal was to defeat the enemy. There was no attempt to understand Adolph Hitler or work out an arrangement for coexistence. There was pretty much general agreement that we could and should emerge victorious.

Later, the concept of limited war took hold and our country was content to push the North Koreans back and keep them out of South Korea. We had a similar strategy in Vietnam. In this case, not only did it not work, but our country lost somewhere around fifty eight thousand precious men and women in the process.

Maybe it was guilt that came from using our technological advantage to end World War II with the atomic bomb. This is something that the left still regrets in spite of the fact that many times more Japanese would have died, not to mention American Gis, if they had to bring the war to a conclusion by invading the country.

People of good will can argue about the wisdom of various military adventures, but these days, there are always other considerations like the opinions of dictatorial world leaders who don’t like us anyway, multinational corporations who don’t want operations to interfere with their business, international bankers who have investments in both sides… and have contributed heavily to candidates from both parties. And it’s not just our own operations where our government willingly puts our service men and women at risk without instructing them and equipping them for the single minded task of defeating the enemy… we are expecting our fighting men who have been trained how to kill people and break things to be our diplomatic arm as well, and we are trying to hold the rest of the free world to this standard… unless they don’t want to.

We thought the best we could do in the cold war was to achieve some sort of peaceful coexistence with the Russian bear. We always approached negotiations wondering what we would have to give up to appease the Soviets, while the Soviets approached each contest with a long list of unreasonable demands… and they would come away having some of them met. This continued until President Reagan brought the “we win, they lose” philosophy to the White House. Within a few short years, the Soviet empire came crashing down. We won, they lost.

Unfortunately, we no longer have Ronald Reagan to guide our foreign policy and we are now guided by a moral ambiguity that does not permit admit that there is a concept of right and wrong, let alone identify which is which. Our leadership has repeatedly apologized for actions taken when we were acting on what we believed was right. This same leadership has failed to understand the nature of the world in general and the nature of the evil in it. As Glenn Beck told us at the Restoring Honor rally, “You can’t coexist with evil”. Our government has cozied up and caters to those who want to destroy us and shunned those who would be our friends.

Our current president is now bringing the Israeli Prime Minister and the leader of the Palestinian Authority together for negotiations. The whole plan is stacked against the Jewish state. They have nothing to gain and everything to loose. Surrounded by countries that don’t even recognize its right to exist, Israel is faced with the prospect of continuously giving and giving to meet the demands of those whose only goal is to eliminate it from the map, even if it has to be a little at a time.

They cannot negotiate with any expectation of reciprocal respect from the people on the other side of the table. It has been said by many, including El Rushbo, that the only way to achieve peace in the middle east is for one side or the other to no longer be able to fight. Our society has lost the concept of right and wrong, of victory and defeat, and lives in the gray, valueless area filled with moral equivalents. In following this path, we are assuring that the middle east will be a festering sore for as long as the eye can see.

Until we regain the concept of right and wrong, and understand that there are values we must pursue, not mildly, but with a vengeance, we will continue to drift from one crisis to another, and none of them will ever be fully resolved. In the same way, we will also find ourselves involved in one low intensity war after another which will accomplish little, but serve to enrich funeral directors and munitions suppliers. It is only when we get the determination to follow the right path, first to find it, and then to travel it that we can break this cycle. The nation of Israel needs to do the same thing. It is only through doing what is right that we put ourselves and our country in a position to be blessed by God. Part of this includes having an agreement with the living God on the land of His chosen people. It’s time for us to consider our ways.