The Rules Murdering Our Troops

by Ralph Peters - September 24th, 2009 - New York Post

Over the decades, political correctness insinuated itself into the ranks of our "Washington player" generals and admirals. We now have four-stars who believe that improving our enemies' self-esteem is a crucial wartime goal.

And the Army published its disastrous Counterinsurgency Manual a few years back -- doctrine written by military intellectuals who, instead of listening to Infantry squad leaders, made a show of consulting "peace advocates" and "humanitarian workers."

The result was a manual based on a few heavily edited case studies "proving" that the key to success in fighting terrorists is to hand out soccer balls to worm-eaten children. The doctrine ignored the brutal lessons of 3,000 years of history -- because history isn't politically correct (it shows, relentlessly, that the only effective way to fight faith-fueled insurgents is with fire and sword).

The New York Times lavished praise on the manual. What does that tell you?

A few senior officers continue to push me to "lay off" the Counterinsurgency Manual. Sorry, but I'm more concerned about supporting the youngest private on patrol than I am with the reputation of any general.

As a real general put it a century ago, "The purpose of an Army is to fight." And the purpose of going to war is to win (that dirty word). It's not to sacrifice our own troops to make sad-sack do-gooders back home feel good.

We need to recognize that true morality lies in backing our troops, not in letting them die for whacko theories.

The next time you read about the death of a soldier or Marine in Afghanistan, don't just blame the Taliban. Blame the generals and politicians who sent them to war, then took away their weapons.

It is just such contemptible behavior by our generals that has moved me solidly into the get out of Afghanistan camp. We cannot trust anyone to protect our troops. The reality is that if the Taliban and Al Qaeda win the insurgency, we can go back in and clean house in weeks, losing a lot fewer troops than sitting around letting them pick us off. Even gutless Republicans like John McCain have tolerated cutting our missile defense and killing the F22 fighter jet we will need for the next war. Robert Gates is a traitor. Barack Obama plans to gut our defense. Yesterday he was announcing his plans to give up our nuclear weapons.

We need to bring our troops home because there is no one who can be counted on to not waste their lives in stupid rules of engagement. Even Bush tolerated this nonsense, which is part of the reason I stopped supporting him. We are currently at war with three forces in the world and no one seems serious about engaging any of them.