The Reality of War And The Tun Tavern Solution

Bob Newman

Anyone who has ever said war never solved anything has clearly never opened a history book. Wars have solved many major problems and, in fact, some wars prevent problems from becoming bigger problems. But don’t tell a liberal or leftist any of this; reality and facts are deeply troubling to the hapless inhabitants of Fantasyland.

Our going to war with the Japanese and Germans in World War II prevented them from achieving their goal of global conquest. Our going to war against the North Koreans and Chinese kept South Korea free. Our going to war in Kuwait and Iraq in 1991 freed a peaceful nation and stopped Saddam from spreading his terror even further. Our going to war in Afghanistan severely damaged al Qaeda and brought down the murderous Taliban. And our going to war in Iraq in 2003 removed from power one of the worst mass murderers in history.

For various reasons, I’ve visited 42 countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Oceania, Africa, and South and Central America since the 1970s, mostly during my 20 years in the Marine Corps. During those travels, I saw everything from decadent opulence and horrific strife to abject poverty and battlefields littered with literally hundreds and hundreds of burned and blown-apart bodies. And if there is one truism I learned while abroad, it is that there is no shortage of evil in the world, and that evil is always perpetrated by certified villains with Mephistophelian designs.

Sadly, my Marines and I, despite our best intentions, have been allowed to kill only a tiny fraction of those so richly deserving of a painful, graphic death.

War sometimes not only solves horrendous problems, but it hones the fighting edge of combat forces, which if left to dull and rust, becomes a latent cancer that can quickly bring about disasters with untold consequences. Sometimes those consequences can lead to vastly increased suffering that could have been prevented by the swift deployment of a fearsome, elite force, such as the United States Marine Corps.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are helping to build the leaders of tomorrow’s Corps. The Marines nearly ran dry of combat-seasoned noncommissioned officers and officers in the last few years. The bedrock of the Marine Corps has always been salty leaders who have seen the elephant. Today’s machine-gunner PFCs, mortar-gunner lance corporals, fire-team-leader corporals, platoon-commander lieutenants and company-commander captains will be tomorrows company gunnery sergeants, first sergeants, sergeants major, battalion commanders and regimental commanders. Twenty years from now, young Marines will have these men lead them into combat knowing their leaders have been there and done that.

The Corps, which started off with a single recruiter posted inside Philadelphia’s Tun Tavern with a mission of forming two battalions of Marines, as authorized by the Continental Congress, will press on as it always has—feared, respected, many say more than somewhat crazy and always anxious to draw blood in the snow of far-off northern lands and in sunny tropic scenes. So albeit a grim fact, war also serves to steel the Marines of legend, who without this inevitable catalyst would long ago have faded into the shadows of history.

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Bob Newman, a decorated, retired US Marine, is co-host of "Redmond & Newman http://www.khow.com/hosts/redmond_newman.html on 630 KHOW in Denver. His “Global Positioning Statement,” a daily insider’s update on the war on terror, is carried by various Clear Channel radio stations from coast to coast. A ground-combat veteran, “Gunny Bob” is the director of international security & counterterrorism services for The GeoScope Group and is the military & terrorism columnist for The Denver Daily News.

bobnewman@clearchannel.com