THE NEXT GREAT WAR | Complete History
POST WORLD WAR II, AMERICA’S WAR RECORD HAS BEEN UP AND DOWN. WHAT IF THERE’S ANOTHER BIG ONE?
HOW come America doesn’t win its wars anymore?” Why yes, this is the Victory Issue! So let’s explore questions of defeat and stalemate. Like the one above, asked to me by a fucking ten-year-old in a classroom I was visiting last year. No, he wasn’t being sarcastic. The question was earnest as a hurricane. I wish he’d been kidding. I stammered out some shit about war being different now, or at least about the terror wars being different than the classic force-on-force style we’ve all been watching in World War II movies since we were in the womb.
I compared the challenges of hunting down and eradicating terror cells on the far edges of the globe to the centuries-long fights against pirates. (Give me a break, I was on the spot.) Then I said some words about terrorism being an ideology, not a state actor, and can radical ideologies ever really be eradicated? We’re only two generations removed from our grandfathers kicking Nazi ass and saving the world from fascism, and yet fat pasty morons still march on American campuses touting the same tripe. And then I talked a bit about victory in war not always meaning a signed treaty on a battleship, just that some strategic objectives have been met. The kids stared back at me with wide blank eyes, somewhere between confusion and boredom. It was hard to tell the difference. I didn’t blame them. I’d have been doing the same in their shoes. Seriously, though: How come America doesn’t win its wars anymore? Since the aforementioned WW II, only small, limited engagements like Desert Storm and Grenada line up clearly in the “W” column for Uncle Sam. Korea was a stalemate, Vietnam our country’s first definite L. (This is where pedantic War of 1812 history goons will try to chime in. Don’t let them. They are the worst.) Afghanistan, like death, taxes, and an inept Congress, endures and endures, no end in sight. I’m not sure what Iraq was, and I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to reconcile the very real hope and sense of achievement my unit came home with in early 2009 with the images and reel footage we’ve all seen since. All those other places our military’s engaging the enemy— Somalia, Niger, Syria, the Philippines, etc.—do those count as wars? How can they, when sometimes our own elected representatives don’t even know we have personnel there? How can they not count, though, when there are bullets
AMERICA NO LONGER FIGHTS LIKE A REPUBLILC. AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT WOULD FORCE THAT UPON US IN A WAY ONLY THE OLDEST PENTHOUSE READERS HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED FIRSTHAND.
flying toward American soldiers and Marines wear our flag on their shoulders? To quote those bad boys of Scottish hip-hop Stanley Odd, “It’s All Gone to Fuck.” Some friends (usually) on the right argue that America won’t find martial victory again until our military is “let off the leash”— that contemporary laws of war and rules of engagement lead to our soldiers having to fight in a limited way. I’m always a little bamboozled when I hear this argument. What other country possesses and has used a Mother of All Bombs like we did in Afghanistan last year? What other military can deploy its special operators across dozens of other nations at once and not fear immediate reprisal? But it’d be foolish to not acknowledge the prevalence of this argument. On the other side, some friends (usually) on the left often make vague references to non-interventionism, like we all haven’t spent our entire lives benefitting from an international order established in 1946 that relies most directly on the threat and use of American military intervention. We’re all complicit, even when (maybe especially when) we’re not aware of it. My friend Brian Castner, a former explosive ordnance disposal officer turned writer, likes to say that we Iraq veterans fought in a contemporary Boer War after joining up thinking we’d be fighting something much grander. The Boer War comparison doesn’t end there, though, because if it’s accurate, it means, he says, another “Great War is coming.” Given the tides of authoritarian madness swirling worldwide, a possible trade war with China upcoming (fucking Christ), not to mention those terror wars that never seem to end, it’s hard for me to think Castner’s wrong, even on my most optimistic days. But—but! Historically, we’re at our best—as a people, as a nation of ideas, and yes, as a military—when there’s a direct existential threat. As I examined all those little wars over the course of the last 70 years for this article, that’s what I kept returning to. None of them were existential threats to any of that, even if on the morning of September 12, 2001, it may’ve felt otherwise. (We all lost our minds on 9/11, though, didn’t we?) I’ve written here before that America no longer fights like a republic. An existential threat would force that upon us in a way only the oldest Penthouse readers have ever experienced firsthand. Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that. War is never glory. It is always state-sanctioned violence to be turned to only when absolutely necessary. If it does, though, if my man Castner’s correct about what awaits in the coming years—well, take it away, Winston Churchill, you loud, proud British loon: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing. After they’ve tried everything else.” I should’ve told those kids that. The perfect response. Next time, I guess.