DEAR EDITOR: Lots of discussions going on — how do we end the war in Afghanistan after 18 years? We’re talking, we’re negotiating. Of course, the Taliban just attacked with a suicide bomb during a truce, but hey, we keep talking. President Trump points out that it’s gone on since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, but we’re still wondering why this war hasn’t ended. We forget so well.
We won World War II decisively. How? We recognized and destroyed the enemy as quickly as possible! We devastated cities and marched our forces into the “Fatherland” with such pressure that Hitler killed himself and the Reich collapsed. Then we went to Japan and devastated a city with a weapon no one had ever seen before. When Japan thought we were bluffing, we destroyed another city and they surrendered.
How have we done since? We negotiated in Korea, the result being a war in stalemate for 65 years, and a Communist dictatorship still in power in North Korea. We enforced rules of engagement in Vietnam, preventing us from hitting the enemy wherever they were. When our soldiers killed the enemy, we prosecuted them as criminals. Then we negotiated our departure, which let the Communists take over. In today’s wars, we do no more than the United Nations allows us to do, we use precise weapons to make surgical strikes, which gives the enemy the advantage of lots of undamaged buildings to move to, and we make so many accommodations for the enemy’s ways and culture that they retain the will to fight on. And so, we continue to lose.
— Jim Kiel, Aurora, via
letters@SentinelColorado.com