BILL SIEGEL: GET YOUR PATTON ON
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/10/siegel-get-your-patton/?page=all#pagebreak
As President Obama dawdles developing a strategy for dealing with ISIS, a seemingly puzzled and frightened news media endlessly ponders, “What should Obama do?”
Let’s face it; even the most hawkish observers insist upon trumpeting the requisite “No Ground Troops” disclaimer. Our elite media and leadership class have bombarded us so often with the notion that America is too war weary to put up with sending troops to an Arab land that no “national conversation” about it ever ensues.
Instead, the disclaimer routinely asserts that America need only send air power coupled with limited special forces and trainers to oversee foreign ground troops such as the Kurds. Now Secretary of State John Kerry plays Obama “Mini-Me” in drawing a red line against sending ground troops while demanding certain NATO nations develop a plan for him. While Obama has, at last, called for ultimately dismantling and destroying ISIS, he envisions a multi-year process operating from a distance and in reliance upon a yet to be formed coalition of the willing- an “anti-surge.” Is that military strategy or a political transfer of responsibility for failure onto our next president?
What, then, should Obama do?
He should first make crystal clear that because ISIS has declared a Holy War against us, we are at war with it. Then he should go to Congress to reverse the defense budget cuts he pushed through during his term.
He must then organize U.S. troops and equipment to be shipped back to Iraq and possibly Syria. Just as neighboring armies could not stand against the Nazis (until Hitler reneged on his pact with the Soviets), any patchwork of predominantly local Sunnis (including the Kurds) Obama might put together will fail to destroy ISIS without US forces on the ground; particularly when al-Qaeda and others likely amplify the chaos globally. Obama should never have engineered the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, especially as recklessly as he did. But now that he has done so, it is time to send them back.
Most importantly, he must call upon the nation to get behind him. This is America’s battle and we must ultimately fight it with every available tool. If we do not wage the war now, it will only be tougher and more costly in blood and treasure later. With this enemy – evil – there is no escape.
In short, he must quit moving like Jagger and move more like General George S. Patton (apologies to Mick).
Can you imagine Patton telling our troops that we are war weary and therefore must call upon international partners (Italy, Benelux…?) to plan and do our bidding? No one ever wants to go to war, whether the previous decade was spent in battle or leisurely shopping with “peace dividends.” Yet when war is forced upon us there is only one true American response- to face the challenge wholeheartedly.
Today’s Patton would castigate Obama, his “team of snivels,” our liberal press, our elite academics, and millions of “Watters’ World” youths who know absolutely nothing about the state of international affairs, much less the realities of Jihadic evil in the world, for bending to their own weakness. That we let their opinions dictate our policy is a shameful disgrace. America demands to win, Patton would remind us, and, under strong leadership, America would fight and win.
Patton today would redeliver a speech he reputedly gave (cleaned up as follows) to our troops during World War II:
“Men, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war is a lot of [bs]. Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.” Patton reminds us that “we have the best team- we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor bastards we’re going up against.”
A Patton today knows we do not wish to be in this position but reality dictates the sooner we get on with it, the sooner we can return to tend to the rest of our nation and lives. “Sure we all want to go home. We want to get this war over with. But you can’t win a war lying down. The quickest way to get it over with is to get the bastards who started it. We want to get the hell over there and clean the goddamn thing up…” Patton further counsels, “We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and showing (read ISIS) that we’ve got more guts than they have or ever will have. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy [insert your own profanity] by the bushel-[and again] basket.”
As we watch videos of ISIS beheading Americans while their followers fire guns and scream “Allah Akbar” in high endorphin ecstatic states, what do we think they are doing? We are in the midst of the global Jihad now, whether we choose to see it or not. It is a fight to the end and there will be a winner and a loser.
Islam is ISIS’s Patton rally call; the Quran is its Patton speech. (Patton probably wished he had come up with “Smite them at their necks” and “The punishment for those who wage war … is execution or crucifixion or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides”). Islam calls ISIS to strike terror in us, to kill their enemies and to risk all for the glory of dying in the cause of Allah.
Patton closed, “I’ll be proud to lead you wonderful guys in battle anytime, anywhere. That’s all.”
That is all; it is ultimately no more complicated than that. Obama needs to get his Patton on not only to outmatch our enemy’s intensity but to remind us who we really are. That’s what a true leader should do.
Bill Siegel is the author of “The Control Factor: Our Struggle to See the True Threat.”
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