2 Lessons for America

[Whispering Death]

The United States will be forced to fight wars of policy during the balance of the century. This is inevitable, since the world is seething with disaffection and revolt… However repugnant the idea is to liberal societies, the man who will willingly defend the free world in the fringe areas is not the responsible citizen soldier. The man who will go where his colors go, without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in the jungle and mountain range, without counting, and who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship, is still what he has always been, from Imperial Rome to sceptered Britain to democratic America. He is the stuff of which legions are made… If the free nations want a certain kind of world, they will have to fight for it, with courage, money, diplomacy – and legions.

T. R. Fehrenbach

Although doing this changes the meaning of the quote slightly, distilling it down into these two phrases, I think, is something all Americans need to realize. "However repugnant the idea is to liberal societies... if the free nations want a certain kind of world, they will have to fight for it."

The second quote is actually a quotation narrated inside of John Antal's "Infantry Combat"

In the past, particularly after the First and Second World Wars, unilateral reductions had weakened the country's military capability and caused petty aggressors to become bold. [Iraq, Bin Laddin anyone?] General George S. Patton Jr., answering the same argument on the obsolescense of conventional war made by a congressman visiting the battlefrong during the Second World War replied: "I told him that such statements since 2600 B.C. had signed the death warrant of millions of young men. he replied with the stock lie, 'Oh, yes, but things are different now.' My God! Will they never learn?"