We can no longer win wars because it is impolite to apply the violence required to do so.
When JFK was president, a reporter interviewed both the president and the first lady separately.
He asked each one who gave the children punishments when such were required.
And each answered in the exact same manner: as my spouse is of too good a heart, I am the one who has to inflict punishment on a misbehaving child.
Since the end of World War II, the US and the West have pretty much never won any war of consequence.
Desert Storm was a beautiful expression of American military power and ingenuity.
The until-then untested A-10 destroyed Iraqi armor like it was tissue.
Sure, there were victories in Grenada and Panama.
But Korea was a tie, Vietnam was a loss, and it’s hard to call Afghanistan or Iraq victories.
Why can’t we win anymore? One can make the same argument about Israel.
Though the country boasts of killing around 8,500 Hezbollah fighters, rockets from a Lebanese terror group recently sent swimmers running for their lives in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya.
Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas, and the Houthis—they may be damaged, but they are all certainly still around.
Why? Every task, whether individual or national, has certain requirements.
If one faints at the sight of blood, maybe being a doctor is not the right job.
There are many physically demanding jobs where men seem best equipped for the demands.
One of the shibboleths of the left for the past half-century is that anyone can do anything.
DEI and pushing women into combat roles are two manifestations of such thinking.
The outcomes often prove that not everyone is capable of doing every job.
A woman holding a stretcher, taking a 220-pound Marine to a waiting helicopter, may be less capable than a male doing the same job.
At the national level, war-making includes certain assumptions.
One does not have to use nuclear weapons on every problem, though there was a time when American leaders thought that such weapons would obviate the need for much of the country’s conventional forces.
If the goal is to win a war or inflict a certain level of predetermined pain on an enemy, then the effort must be appropriate.
For decades, it has not been, and the bad guys have figured this point out.
Let’s look at the recent riots in France after the Parisian club won the European soccer championship.
Much of the damage would appear to come from recent “immigrants”, many of whom arrived illegally in France and other countries in Europe.
There are very simple solutions to this problem, should Monsieur Macron ever conclude that torching cars and stores is really bad for France’s well-being.
One could stop all illegal entry into the country, even if it meant sinking approaching vessels.
Donald Trump has effectively stopped illegal entry at the southern border.
The French could eject all illegal aliens and any aliens with legal visas who were involved in crime, such as torching a bunch of bikes near the Eiffel Tower.
Finally, local Muslims could be monitored for anti-French behavior via police and other intelligence-gathering bodies.
And here is where we have all of our modern problems.
For the French to stop the boats from washing up on their shores would require a few things.
The first would be a belief that France is an amazing country, one worth preserving and protecting for the local citizenry.
No modern Western country sees itself in a very positive light, save possibly the US under Donald Trump.
They are all convinced....
