April 10, 2024

BEN SHAPIRO: America Is Now in the Business of Losing Wars.

Blinken stated, “If we lose that reverence for human life, we risk becoming indistinguishable from those we confront.” He then added, “Right now, there is no higher priority in Gaza than protecting civilians, surging humanitarian assistance, and ensuring the security of those who provide it.”

Of course, there is a higher priority for Israel: victory.

But America is no longer interested in victory.

The pattern of every American war since the end of World War II has been simple: we jump to involve ourselves in military conflicts when we feel a surge of moral outrage at the evils of our enemies; we then begin to question ourselves when we see hideous pictures on our televisions; we then surrender or cut an ugly deal. That is the pattern in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Sometimes, we simply abandon our allies without any sort of serious opposition, as with the Kurds or the people of Hong Kong.

Obviously, America ought not involve itself in foreign conflicts in which we are unwilling to stay the course. American interests dictate pragmatism. But we’ve gone far beyond that. Now we’re telling our allies that they can’t win victories in conflicts in which they are willing to stay the course and in which they can win.

We will actively step in to prevent victory.

And so our enemies grow stronger. They have no such Hamlet-like moral qualms. They push where there is mush. Should Israel accede to America’s request to leave Hamas in place in Rafah, Hezbollah will challenge Israel in the north; Iranian proxies will challenge Israel in the West Bank; Iran will up the ante in Yemen and the Red Sea. Israel and Saudi Arabia will be forced to search for new allies and new weapons. The world will significantly become more dangerous.

In his March 2001 review of Lewis Sorley’s A Better War, Orrin Judd wrote:

Having failed to achieve their aims militarily, the North Vietnamese turned their attention to the Paris Peace Talks.  They were extraordinarily fortunate to be dealing with Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, two opportunists of the worst sort, who were willing to negotiate a deal which left the North with troops in South Vietnam.  When President Thieu balked at this and threatened to scuttle the talks, the North backed off of the whole deal and Nixon ordered the 1972 Christmas bombings of Hanoi.  For eleven days, waves of B-52’s, each carrying 108 500-pound and 750-pound bombs, pummeled the North.  For perhaps the only time during the entire War, the North was subjected to total war, and they were forced to return to the negotiating table.  Sorley cites Sir Robert Thompson’s assessment that :

In my view, on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attacks on the Hanoi area,
you had won the war.  It was over.

At that point, the Viet Cong had been destroyed, we had definitely won the insurgency phase of the War.  Additionally, the North had been defeated in the initial phase of conventional warfare, and had finally had the War brought home to them in a significant way.  Though the overall War was certainly not over, it was sitting there, just waiting to be won.

So what happened?

Over to you, Watergate Congress!

Flash-forward to the 21st century. As Bill McGurn noted in the Wall Street Journal on the day of Obama’s inauguration in 2009, “Bush’s Real Sin Was Winning in Iraq.” To the point where shortly thereafter, Obama and Biden were bragging about what a success Iraq was, before, as Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker noted, Obama unilaterally withdrew all American troops for a reelection talking point, thus throwing it all away and giving rise to ISIS.

And with Obama allegedly back in the White House, 2021 was the perfect time for a repeat. That it took place during the 20th anniversary of 9/11 no doubt added an extra frisson of pleasure for Barry: Biden commemorates 9/11 anniversary with surrender to Taliban.

It’s easy to write off Biden’s “Vietnam” gaffe today as yet another moment of Trunalimunumaprzure. But as David Strom writes at Hot Air, “It is pretty normal for dementia patients to relive their past–visiting their golden age from their golden years–and the Vietnam war dominated the news during Biden’s rise to power. Drifting back from the reality of 2024 to the 1970s should, I suppose, not be unexpected.”

In September of last year, Steve linked to Joe Klein at his Substack: Hidin’ Biden.

For those of us who spent time in Afghanistan, the endgame came as no surprise. I made several visits to a once-crucial town called Sanjaray in Zhari District where a series of American Army Captains learned these truths: that the local leaders were thoroughly compromised by the Taliban, that the local people couldn’t distinguish us from the last invaders, the Russians; that the Afghan civilians were happy—grateful, really—for any help we could give them; and everyone, especially the Talibs, knew we would eventually leave. A mixed message to be sure. But no surprise when the Afghan “army,” which we’d spent billions funding, evaporated in the face of the Taliban offensive. It turned out that almost everybody in the Afghan establishment had made the same calculation as the local warlord in Sanjaray—his name was Hajji Lala: they all had secret deals with the Taliban.

How could Biden not know this? How could he not plan for it? Why did he abandon Bagram, the massive American airbase that might have been a less chaotic staging area for our evacuation than the commercial airport in Kabul?

As the flashback link to Business Insider Steve added noted: Biden in 2010 reportedly told a US diplomat ‘f— that’ when asked if the US should stay in Afghanistan to prevent a humanitarian crisis.

Robert Altman’s cartoonish 1980s parody of Richard Nixon couldn’t have said it any better:

Except of course in the early 1970s, the real life Nixon still held on to the quaint FDR-era notion that America should actually win its wars.

Exit quote:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll