Editor's note: After this column was set for publication, the US military reported that an Iranian-backed militia drone attack killed three service members in Jordan. The Iranians need to pay.
It seems bizarre that I have to tell fellow conservatives this, but it’s sometimes OK to go to war. We’re fighting right now, and some cons about our current armed conflict are up in arms. But war is not inherently wrong. War is sometimes necessary. Sometimes it’s not. And sometimes, a war is poorly run. For example, in America, that “sometimes” is pretty much the entire last 30 years. But that does not mean that war is never an option. Sometimes it’s necessary. Conservatism is not pacifism with lower marginal tax rates.
Again, I don’t know why I have to say this, but I do. There is a strain of modern conservatism that believes all war is inherently wrong and done solely for the sake of corporations and blah blah blah blah blah. I get the cynicism. I deployed a couple of times. But this idea that there is nothing worth fighting over outside our borders is childish. It’s not conservative. It’s just lame. And people should stop thinking it.
Now, there are plenty of wars around the globe we should not want to be a part of. In fact, staying out of wars should be the default. We should not get involved in a war unless a demonstrable American interest is at stake and we have the will and capacity to win. If we don’t, we must stay the hell out. But if those conditions are met, we need to be ready to fight.
In contrast, some cons think we have to be deeply involved everywhere. We don’t. The Ukraine War has turned into a stalemate where I believe the Russians have an advantage. Yet, many people in the conservative movement don’t seem to want to admit that unpleasant reality. I would prefer not to have to. I trained Ukrainians. I served with Ukrainians. I think they were wronged, and I prefer that they win. I wish the Ukrainians weren’t going to lose this war. Still, I am familiar with this thing called history – something a lot of people are apparently unaware of – and history teaches that the Russians usually lose at the beginning of a war, then build up their massive forces using the endless flow of bodies from the interior, and eventually defeat their opponent. I know that Ukraine is so corrupt that it offends Nigerians and that it is not a free-wheeling democracy. I also know that we currently have an open southern border, which is practically inviting in enemies to slaughter us, and it’s very hard to make the argument that we must devote ourselves to endlessly funding the protection of foreigners’ territory when we refuse to do so here at home for our own people. Is it a logical argument? No. Is it a powerful argument? Oh, hell yeah.
So, in the case of Ukraine, we should be less focused on giving it money and more focused on getting the best deal possible right now. We certainly should not intervene. And we should certainly not set ourselves up for a situation where we must intervene, which means Ukraine cannot be part of NATO. The insanity of inviting Ukraine into NATO and thereby inviting a war with Russia should be manifest to everyone. Why it isn’t is baffling. The neocon nimrods who are eager to get into wars are just as bad and just as unconservative as those cons who’ve never seen a war they wanted to fight.
There’s a war between Israel and Hamas, with the background being the war between Iran and the United States. We’ve just been pretending there has not been a war between America and Iran for decades. Now, I would prefer we were not at war with Iran, but Iran seems to disagree, and it gets a vote. The idea that we would be somehow starting a war with Iran is historical illiteracy. From the time Iranians took American hostages in 1979 through murdering hundreds of Marines in Beirut and thousands of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran has been waging a war against the United States. Recognizing the obvious and desiring to defeat a threat to American lives and interests is not being a “neocon.” It’s just being a con.
We can’t just wish the reality of the world away with stupid clichés about how “We are not the world’s policeman” or “No more forever wars.” These people are killing Americans, or at least trying to. If America First means allowing semi-human savages to murder my fellow citizens, count me the hell out.
But of course, America First doesn’t mean that. Donald Trump is famously suspicious of foreign entanglements, and properly so, He did not start any new wars, but he tried to finish some. He was getting us out of Afghanistan wisely instead of idiotically, as Biden did. And he put a combat boot in the collective rear of the useless Pentagon and forced it to stamp out ISIS. Under Obama, the woke brass was just treading water in a puddle of failure as the barbarians swept across Syria and Iraq. Trump didn’t hesitate. He killed the enemy dead. And good riddance.
But he was also wise enough not to get between Kurdish communists and the Turkish forces they have been fighting against for decades. That got him called an “isolationist” and a “betrayer of our allies.” But, of course, no foreigners are allies whom we are obligated to defend unless we have a treaty saying so, and we don’t have a treaty unless our Senators, whom we vote for, ratify it. That’s how we know we have a treaty. That’s how we know we are committed as a nation to putting American lives and treasures on the line. In a democracy – yes, I know it’s a republic – that’s how you make decisions. Somebody does not just unilaterally decide that we are committed to sending a 19-year-old paratrooper from Omaha to get killed sorting out the tribal squabbles of a bunch of seventh-century retreads. America has been there, done that, and no thanks.
But there are times when we must fight, like when our enemies decide to close the sea lanes. America is a maritime power, people. If you know anything about history – and I’m assuming most of the people with silly opinions don’t – you know that the earliest American overseas fights were about the freedom of the seas. Remember that “Shores of Tripoli” line in the Marine Corps song? That was when we sent in the Marines to kill Barbary pirates who were attacking American ships. And properly so. Putting aside that as a maritime nation we need to enforce free transit, people who attack American ships should be killed. They should be killed in vast numbers and made an example of. This innovative tactic will result in fewer people attacking American ships.
We should do it wisely, not foolishly. Badly executed wars make people reluctant to fight necessary ones; that’s just human nature. The failure of our elite over the last few decades is responsible for much of the current confusion between conservatism and pacifism. Our current administration is going with a few pinprick airstrikes and leveling huts with a few hundred million dollars worth of Tomahawk missiles. It should be sending in our Marines. We need to revive the tactic of the punitive expedition, where we go in, kill all the bad guys, then leave, and all that remains are smoldering ruins and mothers using the memory of American Devil Dogs to scare disobedient children for the next dozen generations.
That’s what we should have done in Afghanistan instead of trying to turn a bunch of backward bandits and Pashtun pederasts into a Norman Rockwellian clone of a New Hampshire town. We should have gone in there, whacked everybody who had anything to do with killing Americans, and left. That’s what we should do to the Houthis, but we know that Iran is backing the Houthis so we should also convert the entire Iranian surface fleet into submarines. It’s time to stop playing footsie with these religious fanatics. There’s a thing called “fear.” Let’s leverage it. When they are afraid of us, they don’t screw with us.
But we are told we should not fight back. Wrong. There is this notion among some in our movement that America has no duty to defend its people. That’s ridiculous. I’m not signing on for that. If you put your paw on an American, you and everybody you ever met needs to go and meet your maker. That’s how the Romans did it. And that’s how we should do it. Did you know nearly three dozen Americans were murdered by Hamas on October 7 and that nearly a dozen more are being held by these creeps? How have we not avenged this?
That we tolerate this is a disgrace. And what’s also disgraceful is some in the conservative movement hemming and hawing about whether dual citizens count or arguing that our fellow citizens should not have been there in the first place. Hey, I’m America First. That means that I don’t care where a fellow American is; nobody threatens him. If some foreigner messes with him in the deep, dark jungle of Papua New Guinea, our country needs to avenge it. And through this, Americans will experience fewer foreigners messing with us. That’s called deterrence; if you really want fewer wars, you deter them. If you want to have more wars, you show weakness and cowardice. We can’t let these barbarians push us around. That doesn’t satisfy them. That encourages them.
The bizarre notion that we somehow have a choice about whether we are in a war or not is ridiculous. My new book, “The Attack,” shows the consequences of Biden’s weakness. Our enemies are not afraid of us, so they will come here and murder us. Bet on it. They will come through the wide open southern border door that is being held open by the same incompetent administration that is demonstrating fecklessness and weakness abroad. When you telegraph that you will not fight back, people stop being afraid of you fighting back.
If you want peace, you need to be prepared to kill everybody who wants war. Yeah, I know our government is incompetent. Oh boy, do I know that our military is a disaster. And sure, there are a bunch of people who want to make a lot of money off conflict. Those are things to consider, but simply repeating them turns them into clichés, and clichés are not a substitute for thought.
War is not inherently wrong. Sometimes, war is the answer. Sometimes we’ve got to fight. Not all the time, and not stupidly, but sometimes. We can distinguish between situations. We should not be fighting Russia in Ukraine. We should be fighting Iran right now because if we punch it in the nose, it’s going to stop escalating, as is its pattern. We can’t substitute clichés for thought. We can’t just babble about forever wars as if it’s our fault that we have been under attack by these mutants for over 40 years. I am America First. And sometimes, that means America Fights.