Donald Trump and his military brass understand that victory is measured in outcomes and not sideline statistics.
Until recently, it was accepted wisdom that the U.S. and the Allies won World War II. Some recent kooks and cranks want to say that Churchill was the bad guy and Hitler only wanted to be loved. Murder Jews? Nah, just ran out of food. But let’s go back to the accepted narrative that the Allies defeated both Germany and Japan, as the losing countries signed unconditional surrender documents (with a slight twist for Japan where they insisted on keeping the emperor). Germany’s goal of controlling Europe went up in smoke as did Japan’s dream of taking over all of the Far East down to Australia. What were the costs for the U.S. of a clear-cut victory?
- Over 400,000 soldiers dead
- Over 65,000 airplanes lost
- 52 submarines sunk
- 10,000 tanks and armored vehicles lost
- Over 350 ships sunk, including 2 battleships, 11 carriers, 10 cruisers, and 70 destroyers
The losses described above are enormous. Sure, the U.S. fielded millions of soldiers and produced nearly 50,000 Sherman tanks. So the losses were covered. But why didn’t the press of the day point to the daily funerals or lost equipment and throw up its collective hands and demand an end to war? Because in the day, even the media understood that a) victory was imperative in preventing fascism taking over the world and b) that victory doesn’t come cheap but must come.
The U.S. has suffered both dead and wounded in the Epic Fury campaign. U.S. bases have been attacked in the region to differing degrees of damage. Thank God no planes have been downed or ships damaged, which in the annals of warfare is a miracle. The U.S. forces are showing incredible professionalism across all branches in keeping a high tempo of attacks with a wide range of weapons platforms. The U.S. Army just scored its longest artillery hits ever. The Navy is sending off planes at 30 second intervals. The U.S. Air Force is running sorties at a rate that it has not done since Operation Desert Storm. I would imagine that the pilots and crews are thrilled to finally put all of their training to use. No more ranges in the Nevada desert; now, it’s real weapons on real targets. I wish I could be at a bomber base to hear the chatter of the crews coming back from a successful bombing run.
One of the reasons why Russian, Chinese, Iranian and similar systems have failed is that their hardware is built for approval, not success. Not all of their systems are dogs, and the U.S. has reverse engineered the Iranian Shahed drone into the LUCAS, finding its first use in combat in the present war. Why did Chinese radars fail in Venezuela and Iran, at least as reported in the press? Why has the U.S. been able to bomb the daylights out of Iranian mountain bases and other strategic targets? How can American and Israeli planes fly for hours during daylight over Iranian territory? In dictatorships, one who is tasked with protecting the homeland is not inclined to say something that the ruling junta does not want to hear. If China threw billions of yuans at their stealth-revealing radars meant to detect planes like the F-22 and F-35, who wants to be the engineer to pipe up that the system doesn’t work? Who wants to be the high-ranking air force officer who will brief Xi that their radar couldn’t find 20 B-52 bombers flying right over its antennas? Closed societies do not encourage or support open dialogue. A firing squad awaits the man who contradicts the great leader or big mullah. And while the U.S. and other Western countries have had some lousy and even unwanted weapons systems, the fact that the U.S. countenances whistle-blowers while private companies and the U.S. government are not identical, there is room for dissent. Pierre Sprey, who was one of the members of the “Fighter Mafia” that designed the F-16 was a hard critic of the F-35. And maybe some of his complaints led to modifications by Lockheed. To date, the platform has performed exceedingly well and is controlling the battle space as no previous plane ever has. Israel has used the plane extensively during the past few years, while the U.S. has approved the plane for use with the B61 nuclear bomb.
The Iranians loved to boast of their “missile cities” and ballistic missile capabilities. But as Kurt Schlichter always say, the enemy has a vote in any war. And the U.S. knew that the fixed locations of many Iranian installations only required enough tonnage of exploding U.S. metal in order to either wipe them out or make them inaccessible. I heard a recent report of bodies recovered from one such hideout, and the one receiving them said that they all died slowly from asphyxiation. Once the entrance collapsed, they just had to wait for their deaths. This was the fate of Hassan Nassrallah in Beirut and Yihya Sinwar’s brother in Gaza. The Iranians suffer from the same dictatorship problem as the Chinese, and who would tell the big mullahs that their air defenses sucked or that the Mossad could tell each of them what they had for dinner last night? They thought that their wealth, land mass, and large population would guarantee victory. They are watching decades and trillions of dollars in investment go up in big plumes of smoke.
I don’t believe that the end of the war will be the day that the mullahs are driven from power. That may take many months, and yes, the Iranian people will have to step up and fight for their future. If the weapons and nuclear programs are damaged enough and Iran’s economic future is either kaput or dependent on following Donald Trump’s orders, then the mullahs will be buying one-way tickets out of town. One doesn’t have to destroy everything; rather, if the U.S. and Israel can make the continued existence of the mullacrocy untenable, hopefully it will implode and a better day will be born.
One can never appreciate the force for good that is the United States. Tucker Carlson continues in his anti-American streak, telling a CCP hack that, "The U.S. can no longer be the sole author of the terms, we have to share power with China." Why? It’s like a guy predicting that he will one day be very sick and going to the hospital while he is perfectly healthy, in anticipation of becoming very ill. The U.S. has no need to share anything with China. China’s population is starting to shrink. Its economics are getting worse than they were 20 years ago when they played the West to steal technology and industries. Its military is suffering from the instability of changes in leadership as well as force performance that does not bode well for an attack on Taiwan. Throw in lost cheap oil from Venezuela and Iran, and the Chinese have enough headaches for the near-term. There is no reason to share the stage with them, simply because a China shill says so. Victor Davis Hanson suggests that a great period of U.S. leadership worldwide may well stand before us. The military is performing exceptionally well, as are fighting systems sold to countries all of the world. The economy is waiting to explode after the war is finished, as all of the policies such as tax cuts and tariffs make the U.S. economy very appealing. To strengthen the point, the UAE has promised to invest the $1.4 trillion it had committed. No, Tucker, the U.S. does not need to share the stage with China, and MAGA doesn’t need to share the stage with U.S. haters.