I, in no way, agree with everything that Scheuer says. I do think he is dead on, however, in his analysis of why America won WW2 and why America has lost every war since then, and why we are in danger of losing the current war in Iraq:
Scheuer participated in the following exchange on the FOX News program The O’Reilly Factor:
- O’REILLY: I’m bringing it up to be – to show the Islamic world and those Muslims who are watching us right now, the inconsistency of their thought that, if there was a – you know, a God that was actually wanting them to do whatever, how could he possibly want them to…
- SCHEUER: No, I don’t quite follow it, sir, because I — as much as I’d like to believe that human life is sacred in all instances, war, whether it’s conducted by Americans or by British or by Chinese or by Muslims, war is just war. And it kills innocent people. And that’s the way it is.
- O’REILLY: But there’s a way to wage it. And the way that the al Qaedas are waging it is by killing civilians. They’re not waging war in a conventional way, as you know. Now…
- SCHEUER: Well, they are waging war in the conventional way that we waged war until 1945, sir, which is the last war we’ve won. Once we stopped waging war in the American fashion, we haven’t won a war since….
- O’REILLY: Is there anything we can do to win it?
- SCHEUER: Yes, sir. We certainly have to kill more of the enemy. That’s the first step.
- O’REILLY: Any way we can?
- SCHEUER: Anywhere we can, whenever we can, without a great deal of concern for civilian casualties. As I said, war is war. The people who got killed when they were hosting Zawahiri to dinner were not the friends of the United States.
- O’REILLY: All right, Mr Scheuer, always a pleasure to talk with you.
From The O’Reilly Factor, 19 January 2006[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scheuer#Civilian_Casualties
As long as we play patty cakes with war, we have no hope of winning the war and peace. War is a horrible thing which has incredible potential to either defeat evil and produce unimagined peace, or demoralize the military and weaken the nation. Unfortunately, the way we are choosing to fight this war, we are on a collision course with the latter outcome.
