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War clouds on the horizon are never a good thing. They grow darker by the day the closer we get to the beachheads, airfields, deserts & jungles of our enemies.

Deterrence is a mission & holds great promise when you are a winner. But when you award grades for participation in endless war, deterrence is like suiting up for a little league baseball game when you are about to face Genghis Kahn & his invading hordes. There are no similarities whatsoever.

The kids came simply to play baseball & Genghis & his warriors came to kill & are more than prepared to die for their cause…a cause the majority of Americans have little to no understanding of.

Ask yourself, how many aircraft carriers did we deploy in the last 20 plus years of war in Afghanistan & Iraq & what did we achieve?

War is a failure of policy & strategic leadership (PERIOD).

Yes, there are failures on all battlefields, but that is not where or why wars fail.

They fail due to a number of primarily political reasons.

First, most failures surround the total misunderstanding of your adversary’s political, military, & religious goals, their culture & purpose, as well as their capacity & capability to sustain a prolonged war.

Next are the immense problems of fighting on terrain NOT of your choosing. Politically & strategically having to fight “over there” places today’s US forces at a massive disadvantage. Just consider in isolation, the past twenty plus years of costly, losing efforts in Afghanistan & Iraq. To place a finer point on this, you might “deter” certain actions (not all) from the sea, but you must conquer the land to dominant your enemies.

Lastly, you must understand your own political & strategic landscape & abilities, your population, as well as the manufacturing capacity & capability your nation possesses (relying on China to produce everything is just plain dumb).

A nation’s leader (in our case our POTUS / Commander in Chief) must also have supreme confidence the nation stands firmly behind him as their leader. When a POTUS has the confidence and willingness of the American people, that powerful combination sustained overtime, is unbeatable.

Sadly, I don’t believe for a second this POTUS has gained the confidence necessary nor has sought the willingness of the American people to join yet another war.

Americans know we are still reeling from the losses of massive amounts of political, financial, & military resources from decades of what appear to be endless political failure overseas. And the many political lies just since 9/11 have caused a healthy skepticism in Americans that has only been exacerbated over time.

And more important, our American citizens are exhausted by the endless assault on our homeland by invading hordes, unprecedented levels of crime on our streets, a collapsing economy, our very own federal government using a distorted version of the “rule of law” to go after political enemies (grassroots to a former POTUS).

Many are also frightened from the uncertainty that our constitutional republic is even viable any longer (for instance, a majority don’t trust our elections anymore).

In the end, these above points are theories based on reality, history and experience. They date back many millennium & there are similarities that run across all empires.

Those empires that had a proper sense of their adversary, the nature of the wars they faced & an understanding of themselves did better, lasted longer, but in time, their empires still collapsed.

There does exist a healthy respect between warriors and adversary states. That respect is from demonstrated behavior over time. I’m concerned that our behavior, our actions & our will are not nearly at a level our nation now requires to continue to be the leader of the free world. I pray I’m wrong.

Finally, pray for our men and women in uniform. They, especially our youngest, pay the ultimate sacrifice for the failure of leadership

Thanks for reading & God bless America