I remember the aftermath of the Gulf War. In a matter of a few weeks, we'd wiped the proverbial floor with the Iraqi military, previously thought to be one of the tougher ones on the planet. They'd been bloodied not that long before in a grueling war with Iran which ended in 1988. Many serving in the Iraqi Army had combat experience few of our troops had.
And we kicked their butts so badly that when the ground war started, Iraqi troops surrendered to CNN.
The victory sent shockwaves throughout the world. Russia and China, in particular, realized that a war against the United States simply couldn't be won as things stood at the time.
Now, I'm not a warmonger. People die in war, and as a veteran and a father of someone who is still draft age, I'm not keen on sending people into war needlessly.
But when The Atlantic published a piece over the weekend referring to us as "the brutal American," I was a little miffed about it.
See, there's an argument to be made that the reason the world is such a fiasco as it stands right now is that we weren't brutal. We haven't put Iran in its place. We didn't truly pull out all of the stops going after the Taliban. We didn't really do much with ISIS. We stood aside throughout much of the Syrian civil war and mostly let nature take its course. We've allowed socialist Venezuela to fester in South America and we did nothing as the Cartels seized more and more territory in Mexico.
Those weren't our fights, you see, and we couldn't police the world. We weren't the brutal American and the world kept going to crap.
European nations refused to spend anything on their own defense, content that we Americans would always be there to save them. They looked down on us for not being sophisticated enough to embrace their soft socialist policies and infringements on rights. They'd ask when we were going to be sensible and restrict guns or start cracking down on hate speech or any of a thousand other petty tyrannies they used to judge us as the rubes who don't know what's best for us.
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And we let them.
We allowed them to do that while cowering behind the shield we provided them. We were the knight in shining armor, valiantly standing between the ravenous horde of communism, and when that fell, we stayed because threats were still there. The Soviets were gone but Russia remained. China was still there.
After the Gulf War, they weren't eager to fight, and our presence was enough, but our "allies" still thought of themselves as our betters. They were the aristocrats and we were the pawns.
We were not brutal with their sensibilities. We were not brutal with the dictators and tyrants we allowed to flourish. We were not brutal with the evil of the world or those who would take advantage of us, as a nation or as taxpayers.
Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic called us the "brutal Americans" as if that is something we should be ashamed of.
Personally, considering that all of it stems from President Trump not playing along with the status quo in the world, I'm fine with that term.
The issue is that we've never been brutal enough.
I've long thought we, as a nation, should be slow to anger, but when we are, we should descend upon our enemies with the fiery hand of God. Our wrath should serve as a warning to all who would threaten liberty that to do so is to invite destruction, unlike anything you have ever seen. We should leave a scar upon the psyches of the vanquished meant to last a thousand years.
After a few such times, we'd be unlikely to need to do more than that.
A few Gulf War-like victories would set a new tone in the world.
As a libertarian at heart, I've long held to the non-aggression principle. I now see that many interpret this as "peace at any cost." I can't. Not anymore.
Instead, I say we embrace the role of the brutal American if that's what it takes. We will not be taken advantage of anymore. We will not be ignored, looked down upon, or treated as less than on the world stage, especially by those who have taken no steps over decades of pleading to manage their own defense.
And if the time is needed, we should be the brutal Americans that the world absolutely fears should we turn our menacing eye upon them.
Applebaum thought she was shaming us.
I say we embrace the mantle.
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