President Trump:
Last
time we discussed your refusal to abide by the Constitution’s hard-and-fast
war-making provision, a decision that merits — as it did for most of your
post-1945 predecessors — impeachment proceedings. Waging war in the manner you
did in Syria is the work of an absolute monarch or a dictator, not that of a
popularly elected president of this republic.
Today,
we must discuss a topic that has been covered in this space on multiple
occasions; namely, the need for you to immediately purge — via forced retirement
— scores of your general officers. The American fetish for treating these
officers as god-like wonders is baseless and must be curtailed to the greatest
possible extent. Among the most obvious reasons they merit forced retirement
are:
–They
and their predecessors have not won a war since 1945. In truth, they have won
nothing in the most war-filled 72 years in American history.
–They have regularly betrayed the
military men and women entrusted to their care by American parents by taking
those troops to fight in wars that neither they nor their political masters
intended to win. I do not know of a single case, since 1945, when a general
officer resigned and told the citizenry that he did so because he refused to
lead their soldier-children into a war no one meant to win, and in which the
rules-of-engagement made those soldier-children targets rather than killers.
–They hold their positions for
venal self-interest. To understand why no general has resigned and told the
foregoing truth to the public, just survey the membership of America’s
corporate boards of directors. Those boards are loaded with former generals who
are making more mounds of money to add to their already luxurious pensions. The
formula-for-success for U.S. general officers obviously is: keep silent, get
use to losing, get your troops killed for nothing, and you will be generously
rewarded when you retire.
–They are incompetent and,
apparently, shoddily educated men and women. One example should suffice. They
have been waging war, at various levels of intensity, against Islamists since
Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war in 1996, and they have lost on every field
of battle on which they have engaged the Islamists. Mr. President, did you know
that our Islamist enemies are not professionally trained soldiers; that they
are armed almost entirely with small arms, some of Korean War vintage; that
they have no air cover or naval support; and that their funding, supply lines,
and safe havens are always at risk? Did you know that this is the kind of paramilitary
force that has consistently humiliated the United States and its military for
two decades, one that has forced your canting generals to obliquely admit to
being losers and fantasists with the words like “There is no military solution
to this conflict” and “The Islamists have nothing to do with Islam”.
–They are thoroughgoing liars.
Again, one example will suffice. Since at least 2003-2004, every Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and every U.S. general officer commanding in
Afghanistan, has told the American people that: (1) the remnants of the
Taleban, al-Qaeda, and other Islamist groups were being eliminated; (2) that
our democracy- and nation-building efforts were bearing durable results; and
(3) that the Afghan military was on the verge of being able to defend its
country with minimal foreign assistance. Each statement was a transparent lie
every time it was spoken, and the general officers who spoke them knew they
were lies. Today, the truth is that al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Taleban
are thriving in Afghanistan, while the Afghan government and its military are
collapsing. No number of additional lies will save either. Are these dishonest
men and women the ones you are going to trust to restore America’s greatness?
They are much more likely to again cover the republic in infamy.
Now
is the moment, Mr. President, to fall back on your instincts, common sense,
and, most important, the non-interventionist demands of the people who elected
you. America has no life-and-death national interests in Syria or the rest of
the Middle East. Very few citizens want to expend trillions of additional tax
dollars and their kids’ lives on a war there that is not necessary; which would
be fought for Israeli, Saudi, and U.S. corporate interests; and which your
generals would surely lose. So, dump your in-house, Cheney-sounding, Neocon war
monger, General McMaster; immediately ban the self-admitted criminal General
Petraeus– who lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then deliberately
compromised classified information — from the White House grounds; and then get
on with a wide-ranging purge that can do nothing but improve the the quality,
common sense, and nationalism of the U.S. general officer corps.
With
this done, Mr. President, recall how much essential work you have pledged to do
at home, and how sick your supporters are of unnecessary, interventionist, and
always lost wars. Then, Sir, look around the nation and understand two
irrefutable facts: (a) that America is located in North America, 5,000 miles
from the Middle East’s idiot wars, wars which cannot come here save through the
continued lax enforcement of border and immigration laws, and (b) that the
republic’s security, unity, and prosperity would not be damaged if those
distant peoples killed one another for however long it takes for their wars to
burn out, or until there is not a single living soul from Morocco eastward to
India.
America
First, Mr. President, always, America First.
