There must have been times when our forefathers were tired and the cold, hunger and dying soldiers ate at their very souls but thankfully they did not just quit.
There must have been some disheartening times after the British burned our very seat of power and virtually ran our government out of Washington. But even then, Americans did not quit.
Robert E. Lee sent the Union Army back to Washington with its tail between its legs as the wounded were run down by the carriages of the fleeing politicians who had come out to Bull Run to watch the show. But those Americans did not quit.
Down through our history our much-proclaimed professional arms have failed us time and again at the beginning of every conflict because those who fight wars best are rarely those who supervise our show-and-tell armed forces in peacetime. The “clean hands people” of our peacetime armed forces are the bane of winning wars. They are the vicars of our initial defeats in nearly every conflict we enter. Yet the armed forces and nation always righted themselves, casting aside the pencil-necked geeks, never thinking it was all right to quit.
A Time for Cynicism
Then the Vietnam War came. So jaded had we become that America fell victim, not to an enemy we could not defeat, but to the notion that it was all right to quit.
In the terrible prisons of the Asian gulag, our greatest fear was not of torture, hunger and deprivation but that you weak suckers would quit and make the pain and sacrifice for nothing and the sacrificed lives of our fallen brethren on the battlefield of no worth also.
In the aftermath of our gorging on the self-lashing mentality that we were the real bad guys, we made those who refuse to labor and strive the good guys, and those who succeed the bad guys to be sucked dry because they chose not to sit back and quit.
Even our military leaders proclaim that we will not enter into any prolonged engagements with any enemy, no matter how evil, because we must finish any war quickly or America and they, the generals, will quit.
Are We Too Wimpy?
So my fellow Americans, understand this from a man of war.
You shall no longer prevail in any endeavor requiring even the tiniest amount of intestinal fortitude because you no longer have the will to see things through and simply win at any cost.
All the blood shed in all our wars was in vain because you are so self-thinking that you prefer the slavery of socialist thought to the most honest endeavors of toil, perseverance and yes, war.
Even when you volunteer to fight in a moment of patriotism and sidle forth from your cloistered halls of education or sport with bands playing, you are not good for the true long haul of war.
But pay no mind even if you fall in battle or an accident. Your wimpified nation and family will wear sack cloth and ashes, proclaiming that all the sacrifices of others are secondary to your falling in war, even if your own stupidity caused you to be maimed or die.
War is not the evilest of things but the most honest of all things. This unequivocal right and wrong of it is what so shakes your no longer ethical and honorable underpinnings. You are no longer a great nation but a wimpified blob of quivering fat.
Look in the mirror, America. Your real problem is that quitting is in your blood now. The true enemy is us, not them.
May God have mercy on our wimpified national soul. May our valiant forefathers forgive us for wasting their sacrifice.
Your crime is not in sending American youth to fight but your inability to take responsibility to stay the course in war until final victory with your enemies vanquished.
America no longer epitomizes the gleaming city on the hill of national honor but a nation not afraid to throw up its collective arms and quit.
May our soldiers who fight today forgive us for wasting their valor and blood on behalf of an ungrateful people determined to quit.
Maj. Mark A. Smith, USA, ret., may be contacted at majorzippo@yahoo.com
