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If You Would Have War, Prepare for Peace

Posted: 22 Jul 2009 07:25 PM PDT

A Roman tactician once coined the maxim, "If you would have peace, prepare
for war." Hence the motto of the Strategic Air Command, which was ready at
a moment's notice to rain nuclear fire across the world, was "Peace is our
Profession", displayed beneath a mailed fist holding both the olive branch
and the thunderbolt. The message to potential enemies was painfully clear.
Choose.

The latter century's military history can be
read to coin an equally blunt maxim. "If you would have war, prepare for
peace." In the wake of WWI's horrors, America and much of Western Europe
decided that nothing could be worse than a war. The remainder of that
first half century would be dedicated to teaching them the lesson that
there was indeed something worse than a war, and that was losing or nearly
losing a war.

The nations who desperately prepared for peace all
through the 20's and 30's, confronted enemies willing to mime peace
negotiations only long enough for the tanks to cross the border. Pacifism
had ushered in Nazism. Some of the best soldiers in the Wermacht did not
wear uniforms or even were aware of their affiliation. They were the
idiots cheering on Aldous Huxley's anti-war speeches in a city that would
not long after trade in anti-war slogans for the cries of air raid
wardens. Yet enough of them, like Bertrand Russell, survived, having
learned nothing from the experience and were all too eager to repeat the
same thing all over again, giving up their unofficial work for the
Wermacht, for their unofficial work for the Soviet Army.

There is
no better strategic boost to the aggression of an enemy power than an
assertion that you would rather not fight. And over and over again when
that assertion is made, war follows. No sane homeowner would hang up a
sign in a troubled neighborhood reading, "Reluctant Guard Dog Would Rather
Not Bite" or "Before You Break Into My House, Give Me a Call To See If We
Can Work This Out Some Other Way." And yet First World nations keep
hanging up such signs over and over again.

The European nations as
well as Israel are object lessons in how even the world's strongest
militaries can turn into pudding in the hands of socialists who exchange
the sword for the open hand. 50 years ago the sun never set on the British
Empire. Today there are parts of England itself where the sun will not set
on an Englishman because there are none living there anymore. 50 years ago
France was debating whether to fight on in Algeria or pull out. Today the
same war is no longer being fought in Algeria, but in France.

At
the end of the last century a Swede named Alfred Nobel felt guilty enough
for inventing dynamite that he left his money to be used to distribute
prizes for human achievement, including the Nobel Peace Prize by a
committee of elderly Swedes operating out of Stockholm. Yet the name
Stockholm is more commonly associated with the Stockholm Syndrome, a state
of affairs in which captives experience greater identification with their
captors, than with their rescuers. This seems appropriate enough as
Stockholm today is rife with Muslim violence, rapes, murders and violent
assaults are off the charts. Their justification from
one survey, "The immigrant youth
regard the Swedes as stupid and cowardly: “The Swedes don’t do anything,
they just give us the stuff. They’re so wimpy."

It
makes one wonder if Alfred Nobel were alive today, whether he wouldn't
find something bigger than dynamite to feel guilty over. Such as creating
an entire prize to celebrate stupid cowardly wimpiness as a trait worth
emulating.

On June 9th 2005, Israel's then Prime Minister Olmert
announced to the audience at the far left wing Israel Policy Forum, "We
are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of
winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies." Almost a year to the
date, on June 12th, 2006, Hezbollah attacked Israel, kidnapping and
murdering Israeli soldiers, and touching off what would be called the
Second Lebanon War. A conflict that Olmert miserably bungled because he
had been too tired of fighting, too busy planning for peace by retraining
IDF soldiers to forcibly evict Jewish residents of disputed territories,
rather than training them to fight the enemy.

If you would have
peace, prepare for war. If you would have war, announce to your enemies
that you are tired of fighting. Teach your people that their true enemies
are not without, but within in the form of nationalists, patriots, "right
wing extremists" and anyone else who doesn't think peace through
appeasement is feasible. Redeploy your security forces to fight the
phantom threats of right wing extremism, rather than the terrorists
creeping up in the night to cut your throats. War will surely
follow.

Israel is a case study in how a society and military
capable of handling multiple enemy armies superior in size could implode
within a single generation, once its government and cultural elites
decided to reprogram everyone to prepare for peace. Military efficiency
sharply dropped, draft dodging sharply increased, the people lost faith in
a military solution, the military lost faith in a military solution, and
millions waited and watched while the diplomatic representatives of a
country that in its infancy had held back seven enemy armies, wrangle with
the grotesque terrorist leader over the terms of their surrender, not his.
A farce in the name of peace that was honored with a Nobel
Prize.

And now the United States is next. Say goodbye to the
F-22's. We won't need them where we're going. Which is on a trip to
Moscow, Istanbul, Paris, London, Cairo, Berlin and any other world capitol
for heavy doses of speechmaking. Preparing for peace requires talking a
lot and making grand statements backed by nothing except the puffs of hot
air drifting around the hall and the obligatory round of applause
afterward. There was speechmaking like that with even grander statements
followed by applause all throughout the 20th century, but it was not
speeches about peace that kept anyone safe, but the sacrifices of the
soldiers in the field, condemned as the pawns of warmongers before they
were needed, dismissed as dangerous thugs after they were done. Unregarded
in life, showered with sentimental honors long after the death, by the
same governments busy mistreating their own contemporaries in the
field.

Now as America has an administration desperately prepared
for peace, the war has gotten harder than ever. The only difference is
that an adoring press no longer recites the total casualty counts in an
accusatory tone. The dead soldiers only mattered when their names were
bullets to be shot at a conservative administration. Their usefulness have
passed. Their deaths are now only an embarrassment, a testament to the
fact that preparing for peace cannot hold back the tide of war.