America's Military Adventures

SEE HERE Many pundits made fun of Ron Paul's answers in the recent Republican debate, which I managed to miss, but I gather that Paul supports withdrawing our troops from all the far-flung military adventures we seem to have become addicted to. Robert Ringer endorses Paul's views here and I thought I'd kick in my two cents.

I come from a military family. My dad was career Navy, my brother John was Air Force, I was Army and my children are Marine, Army, and Navy with a daughter married to a Navy man. So we have the territory pretty well covered. That being said, the purpose of a military is to maintain peace not go to war. We've failed every time we actually have to go to war. It is important that when we go to war we prevail, but going to war, let me repeat, is a failure of policy and leadership because war ought to be prevented. Sometimes that is not possible which just means generally that the failure goes further back.

The situation of fighting poorly defined conflicts with no clear enemy and no clear goals and even not all that clear motives seems to have become habitual. In Korea we were defending the free Koreans from invasion by the North. In Vietnam we were defending the free Vietnamese from invasion from the Communist Vietnamese (Don't even bother with the attacks and claim it was a civil war. I've heard them. They were bogus then and bogus now.) We can go on and on with various military adventures, the Iraq war to throw back Saddam from Kuwait, and later the current involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq. It all starts to look like George Orwell's forever war from "1984".

It is unclear that American blood should be spilled in these no-win, pointless military adventures that end up causing division at home, hatred abroad, and drain our resources to no obvious end. We ought not to engage in military action except on the most clear grounds with clear objectives. The fundamental objective should always be to prevail and do so decisively and quickly.

I largely support the policy of the Founding Fathers who did not believe in military adventures in far-flung lands. They had the history of Europe to reflect on. Perhaps we should reflect on the history of our own day. America should be militarily strong and capable of quick and overwhelming response and rarely use the capability that we have. I've always liked Teddy Roosevelt's quote: "Speak softly and carry a big stick."