[Webmaster's note: I'm using a bogus time stamp to hang this at the top of the site for a while. Scroll down for newer posts. Actually posted 2004.07.20.11:52]

By email from "Gene Harrison", who as the post indicates, is on travel. If this is any indication of the type of thing we can expect I can't wait for him to get home and start posting more often. Any dumb sonuvabitch that uses the term "chickenhawk" in our comments will be summarily banned; that was your only warning. Read the bio, folks.

Mr. President, it’s time to go to War!

First of all War is not the resolution of conflict by threat or use of deadly force; that is police work. War is not the final stage of diplomacy. That is diplomacy. War is not establishing defenses against attack—there are no defenses that cannot be breached. Stronger defenses simply change the cost to the enemy of the breach.

War is a national response to a threat of death or destruction to the people or structure (in every sense) of a nation. The purpose of war is to eradicate and so completely destroy the enemy that the threat to the nation disappears. The destruction of an enemy by war includes destroying every asset of the enemy, political, social, religious, economic, psychological, biological, and human. You may choose not to destroy a hospital, but only because it uses the enemies resources that could otherwise be directed toward you. 

Not only must you kill the enemy, you must render it incapable of recovery in any form that had led to the threat or deed that brought war on. The devastation the enemy faces must force complete compliance by the entire enemy polis; civil and military, to our demands that lead to total surrender.

I can’t count the number of Churches we shelled into oblivion in Germany. They were terrific artillery observation posts. I can hardly remember whether we killed 150,000 or 200,000 civilians in Dresden, and that was the work of the Greatest Generation. Nagasaki and Hiroshima demonstrated that in the face of overwhelming destruction, an Empire could be brought to heel. 

We aimed to destroy every avenue of communication that fostered resistance by the civil population. My battalion alone would have silenced al Jazeera on the first day of an attack. No news reporter who had not been screened and whose reports had not been reviewed by censor were transmitted, either to our homeland or to the enemy. As one of my culture heroes, Winston Churchill said, “we will make them bleed and burn.” I wore that patch. My regimental motto was “Death before Defeat.”

I note, here in England where I visit my daughter and my five grandchildren, that none of the children have learned in their schools of the Battle of Britain. They find it hard to believe that children like them living in London, where sent away to the North to escape dying by the Blitz, the buzz bombs and V2s of 1940-41, so that a remnant of a great nation would remain. They thrill to hear me speak with praise and reverence of young British airmen, flying their Spitfire “kites,” against Messerschmitts and Heinkels. 

That is War, Mr. President, and if you don’t think we are in one, you need to replace your advisors, and shape up your military. A good first step would be to return the name of the department responsible for war from the “Defense” Department back to its original title: The War Department.

Go get ‘em!

Contributed by Bill Faith on July 24, 2006 at 11:52 AM in Best of Old War Dogs, Bill Faith, Gene Harrison, The American Warrior, War? What war? | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: JarheadDad

Outstanding! I have been trying to say the same thing for years now. Glad to see it put so succinctly and in a manner that leaves no room for doubt!

Posted by: JarheadDad | Jul 20, 2006 1:40:34 PM

Posted by: 1st Cav

I'm definitely with you on the way to fight a war. It's way past time to quit pussyfooting around.

Posted by: 1st Cav | Jul 20, 2006 1:56:05 PM

Posted by: Rurik

I thought we already were at war. I just want us to start fighting as if we meant it. And to treat our domestic subversives as if we meant it.
And to let our enemies know that we're through with the shell game of rebuilding our defeated enemies at our expense.

Posted by: Rurik | Jul 20, 2006 3:01:04 PM

Posted by: Jim Bartimus

This is a prospective of war that way to many seem to have forgotten because they wern't there. At some point you have got to be willing to fight a war to win it, and do it on your own terms. It is not a game and shouldn't be treated as such. I don't figure Gene Harrison cared much about being politically correct while doing his job and neither should we.
It truly is a matter of life and death sometimes.
Thanks for your insight Gene and we look forward to hearing from you often.
Welcome Home.
Nuff said.

JB/OUT

Posted by: Jim Bartimus | Jul 21, 2006 11:22:18 PM

Posted by: Lisa Gilliam

fantastic commentary and very true,it is a shame that these lefty handwringers are in control of our institutions and it is almost impossible to get rid of them except to force them out at gun point.Frankly,I believe that is what it will take,and I don't think Bush nor his advisors have a good grasp of history or stragtegy,they are stuck right now.And It is time to do away with that BS name of DOD,that is the problem we have been on defense instead of offense.It is wise to go back to what that Department actually is and was and it was about waging war.

Posted by: Lisa Gilliam | Jul 23, 2006 4:21:20 PM