America in Decline? - Answers Part I

Well, let's start with the big, hairy, ugly one right from the start. War.

The media looks at America's inability to win the Aphganistan War and the Iraq War (some say Iraq War II), and declare that that shows America has fallen far in its power.

But does it really?

I really don't know where they're looking for all of these successful American wars. America has always has a pretty terrible war record. Shall we count the losses? Lets.

The French & Indian War (yes, the unsuccessful fighting goes back a long ways), the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. A lot of losses, in other words.

Then in middling kind of wins there's the Revolutionary War (won not through means other that combat), World War I (where we came in only at the end and at a much smaller scale than the European participants), and World War II: European Theatre (same as WW I).

And in the winning column is the Kuwait War (or Iraq War I), the Spanish American War, and World War II: Pacific Theatre. That's it. And only one of those successes is a real full-scale war.

Yeah, it's not really a lot to hang your hat on.

Of course, you could add various Indian wars, but that's not one America tends to be proud of.

And it's still not a lot to hang your hat on.

So, when it comes down to it, we shouldn't be asking the question "Why is America losing these two simple wars?" We should be asking the far more pertinent question of "Why does America think it should easily when any war?"

Or, more to the point - "Why does America keep losing its wars?"

Why, when America spends more on arms than all of the other countries of the world combined, why does it still lose so often.

Now, the answer to that question is complex, but there a few basic facts which tell much of the reason.

First. Yes, America spends a LOT on defense. But, by heaps and mounds, the vast bulk of that money goes to Support (that would be rockets, artillery, special forces, satellite technology, medics, etc). After all, Donald Rumsfeld and his predecessors were in charge of the armed services for a long time, and they were advocates of turning the American military into a small, highly-advanced, mobile army. And you can't have the leadership of the armed services advocating that for that many years without the armed services at least starting to become that.

Look at what we did with rocket technology in the last few wars. Historically, rockets were one of the most inaccurate weapons ever made. You could fire them from a fixed position at a target a few dozen feet away that isn’t even moving and still miss because the rocket spun away to the side. But we have developed the technology to be able to fire rockets not from the next street over, not from the nearby hills, not from a nearby city, but from the ocean complete outside of the country that contains the target. In things like rapid response. satellite technology, and medical response, America is what it says it - in a class by itself, in all of these area of...Support.

And that's the problem. The very nature of Support.

Support can help you win any battle, and there may not be any battle anywhere in the world that America can't win. But wars are more than winning battles, much more. Wars are a succession of battles and others tasks performed in order to achieve a goal.

Take one example. Missiles can defeat lots of enemies. But missiles can't hold territory. If you're taking hostile territory and you defeat the enemy in that territory, that's not the end. Far from it. Then you've got to control that newly taken territory. Security. Missiles can't help you with that.

For that, you need ground forces. Boots on the ground, in modern parlance. Troops and tanks and the like. And in that area, America has been skimping for several decades. Our tanks are now well beyond the technology curve, we don't have enough armored vests and armored transports to go around, and, most of all, we have too few soldiers to secure and control hostile territory.

As I said, you can't have Donald Rumsfeld and his predecessors in charge of the armed services for that many years without the military becoming what they advocated.

This is like Military Tactics 103, by the way. Not exactly high-end, you know. But any military commander who stated it at the time was immediately fired. And that's called Supporting the Troops.

But, the problems with the Rumsfeldian Philosophy go even deeper than that. The army said flat out that not only did we need a lot more soldiers for these wars, we needed set, achievable goals before any combat. Goals such as Removing the Taliban From Power or Arresting These Al Qaeda Agents on Our List.

But instead, we got goals such as Prevent the Taliban From Ever Being in Power Again. Forever as in FOREVER. That means we have to be there FOREVER, or at least support puppet-leaders there who will act in our name FOREVER. That kind of war implicitly can't ever be won. That is the nature of FOREVER. It goes on FOREVER.

And even with puppet-leaders, the old Roman Imperial rules stated that a newly conquered colony would resist for about 100 years before settling down (and don't think I didn't notice you Senator McCain advocating America being over there for 100 years).

So, we have a small, poorly-equipped army led by yes-men generals (anyone who said anything got fired, remember) fighting a war with no goal, just FOREVER. A war that can be lost, but can never be won.

That's the war war that America set out to fight in Aphganistan and Iraq.


No, America hasn't lost any of its ability to win battles. Nor any of its ability to listen to ignorant elites over military specialists. Nor any of its ability to lose wars anywhere in the world.

In all things military, America is still the country it has always been.