Why War is Obsolete for America

One of the bad wraps that liberals get is that they're afraid of going to war- that they're basically a bunch of wimps. Aside from the whole deferment hypocrisy, I'm not saying that conservatives are wrong necessarily. But I believe that war is simply no longer necessary, given the modern state of technology and communications.

There are 3 main purposes for war- to fight over land, to retaliate, and for nation building. As far as America is concerned, there is no conceivable necessity to defend it's borders. We are a bi-coastal nation and there is little chance of ever having to fight for our land with Mexico or Canada. Hawaii and Alaska are entrenched, and the rest of our territories can be filed under 'miscellaneous' and would be readily defendable if necessary (what is the Aleutian islands anyway?).

It is also highly unlikely that America will ever attempt to conquer land again. There's very little reason to do so and the one thing that we Americans love, but take for granted, is the safety and peace under which we live. I seriously doubt that so long as we are a democracy, that people will support disturbing our little party in the name of a few more acres of land.

So, we can knock the first reason for war off the table.

Retaliation is, perhaps, a necessary evil, although one I have trouble endorsing. Why do you have to retaliate? Ghandi, Jesus and I are in the same camp on this one. Do we need to be a tough guy? Do we need to "teach them a lesson?" There may be some argument for future deterrence, and that's reasonable, but I have come to doubt the sincerity of that justification, and believe retaliation is mostly for revenge. Be that as it may, retaliation and war are two different things. Was it necessary to go to war with Afghanistan in order to retaliate against them for 9/11? No, it was not. Why? Because we have precision missiles. We have unarmed drones. We can kill anyone we want, any time, in any city or populated location. Yes, we still have trouble killing from the sky in mountainous areas, but I'm sure we're working on that too.

My point is, if you want to kill Mullah Omar, go ahead and kill him. I'd support that. But there's no need to send our young people into a quagmire over it. You just punch in the coordinates and fire. Or, if you're really certain you want to retaliate, send a MOAB (mother of all bombs, look it up). No dead American soldiers, message sent.

I sometimes think presidents and hillbillies romanticize war, as if there's something noble about going into a foreign country and dying. You know how in some toll booths, there's a basket collecting your money, and in others, there's a person? Well, that's kind of how I view retaliatory war. We don't need to sacrifice the lives of our young people to retaliate, we can just use the basket.

Finally, we come to nation building. Nation building is the futile attempt to prop up nations in hopes of someday harvesting their natural resources.. er.. freeing their people. Has it ever worked? Do we consider Israel a success? How much does that cost us every year? (answer: $2.5B) How about Iraq? Was Iraq really necessary? I mean, we could have just dropped the MOAB or sent a few precision missiles into Sadaam Hussein's castle.

Remember the Stealth bomber? Remember how stealth it was? Why did we come into Iraq with our huge warships, cannons a blazin', announcing our presence? A better idea would have been to fire up the old stealth bomber and drop a few precision bombs. Far fewer deaths, and in the end, Sadaam is dead. With my approach, we'd have total chaos, a country on the brink of collapse, a dead Sadaam Hussein, and no American lives lost. Under the current plan , we have total chaos, a country on the brink of collapse, a dead Sadaam Hussein, and 30,000 casualties. My idea is better- no casualties. But the prerequisite is that we're honest about it. Furthermore, the only way nation building ever works is if the citizens build the nation and benefactor nations support them (remember how the French supported us during the Revolution?), and we can certainly accomplish that goal without war, or at least without American war. We have wire transfers and Skype now.

The fact is, we no longer need to conduct full military assaults anywhere, ever. And we certainly don't need to do it with human beings. Doing so is like using an axe for surgery when we now have the technology for laparascopic surgery.

Am I a big wussy liberal for suggesting we use the laparoscope? Am I showing disrespect for the axe and all the great lumberjacks who built this country? War is obsolete, just like newspapers and rabbit tests. We need to let it go and use our technology for precision killing. That's what it's there for. Now watch this drive.