“Fight not to win, but to avoid losing. A surefire losing strategy” – Phil Knight
In any armed conflict in the last 75 years, some politicians and media pundits warn that the US or our allies must not overreact, that we must have a “proportional response”. How has that worked out since World War II? We lost thousands of our military personnel in Korea and ended up in a stalemate. We lost over 58,000 in Vietnam and lost, having to hastily pull out, thanks to the Democrats failing to give military aid to the South Vietnamese.
In the first Gulf war we lost a total of 298 of our warriors to combat and non-combat related deaths. If we had fought the war to a total victory the second war in Iraq would most probably not been waged. That war cost us nearly 4,500 deaths of our military and Iraq is now a country that is only tepidly friendly to the US. In the Afghan war we forfeited the lives of almost 2,500 of our military. That twenty year war ended in the Biden disaster that left 13 of our service members dead and left billions of dollars of military weapons, equipment and vehicles to our Taliban enemies. In addition to all of those killed, thousands more have come back home from these non-declared wars with life long, debilitating injuries and damaged psyches.
There is the ultimate question to be asked: is our country better off having fought these wars to a stalemate or would we have been in a better position if we had entered these conflicts with the intent to win? Our country isn’t the only one to be cursed with homegrown and foreign critics demanding a “proportional response” to some violence committed against our country. Israel, our closest ally and the only democracy in the Middle East, is vilified constantly for having the audacity to even exist as a country, let alone as a religion and culture. Almost all of the countries in the United Nations would celebrate if Israel ceased to be.
After the Hamas atrocities that were committed on October 7, 2023, Israel was warned not to overreact, that they should have a “proportional response”. I tend to agree with that. What would be a proportional response to an enemy who kills babies by putting them in hot ovens in front of their parents or rapes women and preteen girls in the presence of their families? That took hostages with the intent to starve and/or torture them. What is a proportional response to a foe that’s expressed intention is not only to eliminate your country, but all Jews worldwide? To any reasoning adult, the proportional response to such barbarity would be the complete defeat of that enemy. It would not be a battle or war where the enemy’s body count equaled those they imposed on your side. Only a total defeat would ensure that the foe could never, ever impose such savagery on your people and country again.
The lesson to be learned by the past 70 years of wars the USA has been involved in, and those of Israel, is that we should never enter an armed conflict we do not intend to win. That will not only insure victory, it will prevent other adventurous nations from testing our resolve in winning wars.
