Dé·jà Vu
Noun:
A feeling of having already experienced the present situation.
Origin:
Early 20th century: French, literally ‘already seen’.
In July of 1975, the American military arguably suffered its worst defeat in its history. The combined communist forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army captured Saigon, creating havoc and panic among the South Vietnamese population and the remaining United States civilian population which was still in the city. It was an unmitigated disaster.
In the following decade, over three million Southeast Asian people died under the repressive communist regimes of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. None of this was the fault of the U.S. Military members at the tip of the spear, the Army foot-soldier, the Marine “Grunt” or the Navy and Coast Guard enlisted personnel. There was a great deal of blame to go around at the top of the command structure however, by older men who sent younger men to fight and die or be maimed for life under impossible “Rules of Engagement”.
Because Washington politicians and the Pentagon leadership didn’t learn from that catastrophe, it has happened again, and over an even longer period of time. This time, it was in Afghanistan, the graveyard of armies back to the time of Alexander the Great and before. The Russians should have learned from our experience in Viet Nam in the 1960s and 70s, and we should have learned from theirs in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992. We didn’t. What was that lesson?
Simply put, it’s that a guerrilla war, fought against insurgents fighting with religious fervor to defend what they believe to be their homeland, is virtually unwinnable. But wait, you might say, Viet Nam wasn’t about religion! Yes it was. The belief in communist doctrine is almost religious in nature among the true believers, and the doctrines of Islam are even more so. Which has been proven time after time since the seventh century.
The United States of America, was victorious in every conflict it engaged in until the Korean War, when President Truman decided that he knew more about how the conflict should be fought that Douglas MacArthur, the Commanding General. The fact that he intervened, removing MacArthur from command, created a stalemate and an armistice which allowed the communist regimes of North Korean and China to survive and thrive to the point that they threaten us militarily, and in the case of China economically, to this day.
From that day to this, perhaps with the exception of the first and second Gulf Wars, we have never won another conflict we have become involved in, and have squandered Trillions of dollars and the lives of tens of thousands of our armed service members in the process. Along the way, very few if any politicians or high level military officers have paid the price for their ineptitude. In fact, the best and brightest of our military military leaders have been shuffled aside by politicians who instead promote those who tell them what they want to hear, rather than the truth.
The last Democrat president to not play politics with the military was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and even he need the quiet urgings of Winston Churchill to prevent him from doing so. After him, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barrack Obama and now Joe Biden have frequently promoted the worst, not the best, that our military had to offer. In truth, with the exception of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, the Republicans did no better. Bush ’41 was a vacillating disaster, and his son Bush ’43 acted with emotion rather than reason when he got us involved in not one, but two Middle Eastern conflicts with so many “Rules of Engagement” that it was virtually impossible for the people with “Boots on the Ground” to win. When will these people understand that you can’t create an American style democracy in a country that basically doesn’t want one, or even understand the concept?
So, despite the assurances of Biden and General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Taliban are indeed winning. The hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and the untold quantities of American blood which have been shed in the hellhole of Afghanistan over the last twenty years have been squandered by incompetent military leaders and the politicians that put them in place and kept them there.
Some years ago, during the Obama administration, we were told that our returning veterans were a significant threat to our society. That they should be closely monitored, and not allowed to own guns. Over the last twenty years, tens of thousands of these courageous men and women have in despair committed suicide, in a much greater proportion than the general population. So what do the leftists Democrats fear from our veteran population? Could it possibly be that they could indeed form the nucleus of a righteous militia to defend this nation from “All enemies foreign and domestic” as the Founding Fathers intended?
Currently, the Democrats are positively giddy in their belief that they have won. They sincerely believe it is only a matter of time before they are the sole political party ever to win a national election again. In their ignorance they have been creating a force that will overwhelm them in the not too distance future. The bad actors will finally be held accountable for their deeds, and it can’t come too soon.
The sight of helicopters once again evacuating panicked civilians from the grounds of our embassy, this time in Kabul, might just be the trigger to begin the process of taking back this country from the evil which has nearly overwhelmed us.