Notes of Concern…
…Jack Blair
THE NEW KIND OF WAR
Raise the DEFCOM to the highest level
Put the country on war alert requiring the manufacture of
needed weapons and support materiel.
Get a war vote out of the Congress.
Order the Joint Chiefs to set up an invasion plan with two
alternative plans.
Move the fleet to the Middle East.
Work with friendly nations to establish air bases for the
USAF that puts us within close range for the attack.
Reconsider the draft.
All career officers should be told this will be a chance of
battlefield promotions.
Hold on.
This is what we do when we know which country is our enemy.
In the world today there is no country that can be
identified fully as our enemy.
We have no country to attack.
Our enemies are individuals and they are scattered all over
the world and are prepared to give their own lives to take the lives of the
people of the world whom they see as their enemy.
In all the wars we have fought we knew exactly whom we were
fighting and where to find them.
When President Truman decided to drop an atomic bomb on
Japan he gave them two chances to surrender. It took two bombs to get their
attention. There was a lot of collateral damage, meaning non-combatants,
civilians of all ages died. But it ended a war and saved thousands of American
lives.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor we new which county
to hold accountable. Same in Vietnam and in Korea. We knew they were our enemy
and we knew they were supported by the Chinese.
The American people need to understand that we are not fighting
any more against nations, but rather individuals who train and plan in nations.
Any attack against those nations that harbor and encourage
terrorists will include collateral damage beyond what Truman got in Japan.
The enemy counts on our unwillingness to use our most
damaging bombs to reach them. So they scatter their camps and they regularly
move around in various countries and when training is complete they send their
new warriors into the U.S. to await the order to strike.
Those strikes could run the gamut from a suitcase bomb set
off in a large stadium killing everyone who went for a night out to watch a
sport contest. They could use gas in a large office building killing everyone
who is at work that day. They could, on a coordinated basis, go into five or
ten schools in different states and kill all the students and faculty. They
could bomb the subway systems in major American cities.
West Point and other officer training schools did not have
classes on this type of war.
The possibilities are many. Defending America will be
difficult and perhaps impossible without a major change in the way we Americans
think about fair play.
Our enemy beheads their captives. The captives are more
often newsmen, aid workers, and students. They have made it clear they want to
kill people who disagree with them regardless of whether they are in our army
or just trying to offer their services to those in need.
The kind of decisions the president and the Pentagon need to
make to protect us against the “new way of war” will not be popular with
Americans. Our actions will have to be very far away from the kind of nation we
think we are.
This becomes difficult to contemplate. But it is going to be
necessary if we are to survive.
Because this is a very scary situation for our nation, we
have been slow to react. Again, the enemy counted on this and our reluctance to
move on them has permitted them to train, recruit and grow.
Each day they become stronger and better prepared and we
lose ground.
This conundrum on how to fight has seemed to paralyze the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the leaders of the Congress and the President himself.
They are the people on whom we count. I am sure they have
seen the situation and are discussing various ways to respond. Unfortunately,
they have not yet understood that Israel learned the hard way: that one has to
respond quickly and efficiently to these atrocities.
We see on the Internet the beheading of innocents. Most
recently we witnessed the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot.
It is time for hard decisions, quick response to any
outrageous actions like we have seen recently from ISIS. Americans are going to
have to learn to stomach American responses far outside our moral and fair play
standards of the past.
I think we are not far away from the Israeli experience.
Once they start massive undertakings in our homeland they will be established,
prepared and effective in undermining our way of life.
My preference would be to take them out where they are. In
order to do that we will need massive air strikes, an acceptance that
collateral damage is brought on by ISIS not by our response.
Until our enemy
understands that whatever price they require us to pay when they attack, the
price we will exact from them and their host countries will be significantly
greater.
My readers know that there is not a diplomatic solution to
this kind of problem. You negotiate with another nation but not zealots who are
scattered throughout the world.
This is a fight we need to take to them before they bring it
to us.
A recent example is when ISIS burned alive a captured
Jordanian pilot, within 24 hours Jordan executed two terrorists being held in
their jails.
Our president has felt the release of prisoners from
Guantanamo Bay, in the most recent case four dangerous terrorists, was a
gesture our enemy might appreciate. Of course all three went back home to
rejoin the effort to kill Americans. The President has bent over backwards to
change the enemy’s view of America. He has tried hard for six years. Secretary
of State John Kerry has hardly had time to replenish the clothes in his
suitcase as he travels the world trying to find a way toward peace.
Gentlemen, it didn’t work. It is not going to work. You need
to read more about Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman to understand what our
current enemies understand.
They understand
strength.
They understand they will pay heavily for any attack on
American citizens anywhere in the world.
And they need
to understand if we capture them, we are not going to release them or trade
them but rather execute them every time they do the kind of horrendous acts we
have recently seen them commit.
How far can we be from the beheadings of more Americans and
the burning alive of American citizens?
How far can we be from finding that hundreds of young
Americans have been recruited and trained and then returned to America to await
orders to strike our homeland?
My take on this is that we are close to seeing individuals
taking action against America in their hometowns and states. It is going to get
very ugly very soon.
A new kind of thinking about protecting Americans and
American interests is required.
