WHAT WE'VE LEARNED & CONVENIENTLY FORGOTTEN

Long ago in the mists of ages, warrior societies learned that terror won wars. Thus villages and other communities were destroyed and anything and everything there became the proverbial 'spoils of war' including children for slaves and women for wives or whores. The victims were not given choices. Appealing to the captor, a captive woman became perhaps a wife; so-so, a mistress whore; indifferently sexy, bound for a whore house; homely, a mere slave. To the Comanche, the same choices existed, carried out ever so much more roughly and ruggedly; and the resulting life was ever so much harder for the victim. Children were killed or, if old enough to be self sufficient, taken as slaves, or girls, taken for future wives.

We've grown and evolved. And yet Sherman burned a swath through Georgia and cut the South apart to achieve victory, and the U.S. Army knew that the buffalo hunters were helping them do their work of defeating the prairie tribes by eliminating the animal that supplied everything those natives needed.

In the modern era, during the greatest of conflicts, World War II, with an unquestionable moral justification to it, the Allies learned that the people of their enemies supported their governments and were thus fair targets. The Allies and everybody's favorite historical target, the Americans, perpetrated serious bombing raids on Dresden and Hamburg that rivaled or surpassed the later Nuclear attacks on Japan. When Army Aircorps strategists learned that Japanese homes were made of paper, they fire bombed Japanese cities. When Japan did not surrender when it was clear that hey were a beaten nation, the nuclear bombs were employed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The political left has criticized the argument that those bombs saved lives. I for one believe they did. What America and her allies did know for sure was that the people of Japan were very dedicated to their country and to their emperor, who at that time was considered to be a god. A tremendous resistance to an Allied invasion was  expected that would involve the masses of the Japanese common people. Many Allied fighters' and Japanese lives would have been lost. Similarly, at the time of the bombings of Hamburg and Dresden, the Germans were thought to be fanatically behind their evil leadership.

In the more modern era, the world faces similar fanatical enemies, both those following religious beliefs and those perpetrating the drug and human trafficking trades. We have newer more efficient weaponry and more specific targeting techniques and technology. We know as well that often times the places where the enemies hide are peopled by their supporters and, at other times, the local populace is nearly held hostage. But modern intelligence is much better now as well.

We learned that well planned massive attacks win wars, even those against civilian populations that support evil and the perpetrators of evil. We learned that lesson and, within a politically correct era, we forgot it. We know now how better to discern who is innocent and who is not. who is hostage and who is a complicit supporter of evil. And we face great evil. The strategic and tactical goals should involve studying the collective lessons of military history and tactics, both old and new, and wedding them together for a greater and somewhat kinder,more moral modern warfare, but one that does not shrink for risks and does not fail.