One Battle Does Not Win a War

Matthew Despres / May 12, 2011

America’s history is plagued by a succession of conflicts for which we have been unprepared or insufficiently committed, having succumbed to the belief that peace is a guarantee of its own existence. Over the last century, from the beginning of the Korean War to post-Vietnam, the military has too often been forced to do more with less, and each time ultimately required a significant expenditure in both blood and wealth to bring them back from the brink.

With significant defense cuts already during his tenure, President Obama has recently proposed an additional $400 billion in cuts. Perhaps the largest wartime cuts to this nation’s security capacity in history, such reductions belie the fact that Osama bin Laden’s death did not in fact end the global war against terrorists. We are still actively engaged in the fight for freedom across the world, and it is the United States military that leads the vanguard of this fight.

Operation Geronimo—the operation that killed bin Laden—was the culmination of human capabilities across multiple military and intelligence fields, and there is no substitution for such resources. To argue that the success of these resources is the perfect explanation that they are no longer needed is, to put it bluntly, asinine. (more…)