By Their Rules

America is engulfed in Barack Hussein Obama's war in Afghanistan using his rules of engagement (ROE) and this includes trying to reach a negotiated settlement with the atavistic Taliban. Obama's schizophrenic policy of introducing a large number of forces but tying their hands while trying to talk to those who protected Osama bin Laden and are still doing all they can to kill Americans is leading to the needless slaughter of US forces. The military of the United States has incalculable power to devastate or even destroy the world but because of some pretended moral imperative, we have taken countless military options off the table in the fight against the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda there. We do not carpet bomb or saturate with artillery but put troops on the ground, inserting them at great risk, to protect supposed non-combatants who are actually in virtual universal sympathy with the jihadists and from whom the Taliban draw much support and many of their numbers. In other words, we are losing American lives to protect people who want to kill us. The cost for the United States today for our "courageous restraint" was thirty-one (31) American troops whose Chinook helicopter was evidently shot down and who may not have fallen under more robust rules of engagement up to and including total war with the goal of victory. A nation should never wage war to reach a negotiated settlement with a dastardly opponent but to defeat that enemy to the point of sufficient destruction that the adversary pleads to submit. Remember how General William Tecumseh Sherman said he intended to defeat the Southern Confederacy, he intended to "make Georgia howl". America and our allies should inflict enough pain on the Taliban that they beg to surrender or are wiped from the earth.