Winning?

 

I was never much of a sports guy until 1986, when my best friend would invite me to watch the 1986 Brazilian team in action. Victories were celebrated but the defeat to France in a penalty shoot out in the quarters brought tears. It was this experience that made me understand that victory was a thrill and defeat was tragic.

After Hamburg, my stepdad got transferred to England and I entered Churcher’s College. Prior to joining Churcher’s, it was stressed to me that it was important to be seen on the “playing fields,” if I was to fit in. So, whilst I was not anyone’s idea of an “athlete,” I took part in house level rugby and hockey (the field variety to Americans). I now joke that one of the best things about being in an English Public School was that I could talk rugby with guys from the Southern Hemisphere and cricket with people from South Asia, two groups that I would end up working with closely in my working life.

Sports are fun and it’s easy to know who has won and who has lost. The score board is visible. In a race, it’s pretty obvious who crosses the finishing line first.

However, this isn’t exactly the case in war, which is often said to be the thing that we substitute with sports. The point is often made when you talk about America’s post World War II military adventures. Think of Vietnam, where the world’s strongest military dropped a ton of bombs on the country and all we remember is the Americans running away on the rooftop of the American Embassy in Saigon. Many years later, we saw something similar with the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Why do we have such memories of the what is undoubtedly the world’s strongest military machine ever? The answer is this simple – unlike sports, there’s no obvious score board. It’s not a case of I kill more of yours than you kill more of mine or I won more battles so I win the war. In the case of Vietnam, the Americans won all the battles. In Iraq, American forces steamrollered what was left Saddam’s army. In both cases, America ended up having to pull out with loss of treasure and blood.

The current administration puts it down to “stupid” rules of engagement and “woke” ideology. If you believe the current Managing Director of the Pentagon, you’d think that all America needs is to be allowed to hit harder.

Given that the MD of the Pentagon is an alcoholic who reports to a draft dodger who can only fight toddlers when their hands and legs are tied up, it’s clear that the decades military knowledge in the vaults of the Pentagon have been wasted. America has lost wars because of a “woke” military but because of politicians who failed to understand what war actually is. The situation is worse in the age of mass media. Politicians cannot resist looking good with the troops but when flag draped coffins come home, they start panicking. Now, you have a president who is a former reality TV star whose entire world view is fixated on “appearance” rather than actual work.

In Venezuela he looked cool. Delta Force did a masterful job of entering the country, capturing Maduro and getting out. Venezuela’s new leader agreed to work with him and everything is cool.

Then, he just decided to bomb Iran, which was negotiating and giving the pretense of being a good neighbor in a volatile neighborhood. It even looked good for him in as much as the 86-year-old Iranian leader, Ali Khamenei was killed on day one of strikes. The ever ready, TV star has gone around talking about how the war is a “12 or 15 on a scale of 10” and even mentioning that the war has already been “won,” and accused British Prime Minister, Keir Stramer of joining too late:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9dn3j04lydo

 

 Yes, the USA and Israel have been pounding Iran. They are way ahead in almost every military measure. However, every boxer will tell – you haven’t actually knocked your opponent out until you’ve actually knocked him out. Despite having the weaker military, Iran is still sending missiles to Israel and American bases around the region. In short, the Iran has become what every nation in the Gulf has feared.

Trump is talking “fury” if the Iranians don’t open up the Straits of Hormuz. Hegseth has talked about unleashing fury. Why do you need to say all these things if you have already won?

The Iranian foreign minister has said “we’re ready.” Israeli newspaper, Haaretz calls whatever the American administration is thinking a “fantasy.”

 

 

Here’s the thing, if you want to get into a fight, you got to understand that people are going to hit back. I go back to the point of the fact that the person in charge can only fight toddlers but only in the toddler’s arms are tied behind his or her back. In trade, he started slapping tariffs of countries. Most of the world didn’t want to pick a fight with the world’s most prominent economy. The one country that hit back was the one he wanted to “reign in.” Put tariffs on China and China put them right back on him. China knows its economy is smaller and more fragile but the Chinese had leverage and used it. The Toddler Fighter told China not to hit back and he’s at the negotiating table.

Now he’s bombing the living day lights of Iran. Many people are saying that its part of clever strategy to get leverage over China:

 

Perhaps it would be leverage but only if you actually win. He’s saying he’s won and everything will be over soon. Yet, the Iranians are still firing missiles and they’ve made a point to the GCC (Oil Rich American allies who buy American hardware) that American protection isn’t what it is cracked up to be. It took 20-years for the Taliban to be replaced with the Taliban. It taken two weeks for Khamenei to be replaced by Khamenei. The only Iranians dancing in the streets and thanking him are the exiles. The ones in Iran proper have now rallied around what was an unpopular government. How is that winning?

America is winning on the battlefield. However, just about every credible analyst is making the point that it isn’t winning the war. Sure, China pays more for oil – but so does America. The Iranian regime is still there. Trump wants investment but who wants to invest in a place where the leader is willing to tear everything down? He’s asking Iran to not retaliate. Why would they do that when you’re bombing them?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/3/10/iran-war-live-trump-says-conflict-will-be-over-soon-40-killed-in-tehran

 

 

In the first Gulf War, there was a president who knew what he was doing. Bush the Elder came to defend Saudi Arabia. He went out of the way to not make it a “holy war” against Muslims by keeping Israel out when Saddam sent Scuds. He saw to it that he got an invitation from the Saudi’s after Saddam had marched into Kuwait and he made damn sure that he got things done before Ramadan was even mentioned. Today, you have an American President who does what an Israeli Prime Minister convicted of genocide wants, hitting first in the middle of Islam’s most sacred month. How is that a win for America on the global stage?

“It’s No You at the Gun Site” – A Loveable Bear

 Call it a coincidence but we’re now in the 10^th day of the war in Iran and it happens to be the 29^th anniversary of Exercise Swift Lion, when my SISPEC (now called SCS) bunk mate and one of his men were killed when the 155mm Gun Howitzer he was commanding, exploded.

Although the initial fear and sadness of the incident have long since passed, that incident is what you could call a watershed moment. It is something I can quite explain. It was like, we could be next, all for just doing your job.

I wasn’t there when it happened, I was in home base hopping not to go out and leading the specialist rebellion against going. Whilst I was lucky to have a battery commander who took the role of leadership seriously, I couldn’t help but feel that a system run by old men was more interested in protecting the system than taking care of us – the guys who were going out to fire the round that just killed our friend.

Sure, this wasn’t a war (a point which we made to the powers that be) but it was tragic and traumatic enough. It’s like this – weapons look cool when you’re a kid – then suddenly when you see your friend come back in a body bag, you realise the games have consequences.

I can intellectually tell you that sometimes war is a necessary evil. There are times when nations need to fight and lives need to be sacrificed. As a solider, you cannot say that you’ve discovered that you’re a pacifist once you’re called upon to face action.

However, if you ask me how I feel about military conflicts, I look at it through that incident I lived through so many years ago. I think of my late buddy Bryan Ng during the incident who made the point of saying to our battery commander, “Sir, you need to remember, I’m in the one at the gun site, not you.”

I was always the more articulate one but now that I look back, he said it best. Just look at any given society and you’ll find that it’s always the people (who are usually old), getting high on conflict are the ones sitting furthest away from the danger zone. In supposedly democratic societies, there’s this thing about keeping the military under civilian rule. Generals are portrayed as wanting war. The truth is this – it’s inevitably the civilian politicians who pick fights because, well, it’s not them in the war zone. Just remember, the only person who wasn’t not keen to invade Iraq in the Bush II Administration was the only career military man.

 

 I view people who think conflict is a joke with a certain degree of contempt. It’s easy to talk tough when you’re behind the front lines sitting in your airconditioned office.

Let’s just take a look at the current conflict in Iran. The Late Ayatollah Khamenei was 86 when he died. Donald Trump is 80. Bibi, is 76. To Trump, this is game, where you compare how many people have died and then treat it like the Super Bowl:

 

 To be fair, to Trump, he bought his way out of any form of military service. Daddy has money so it’s easy to get out of being anything in particular. Bibi is a different story. He actually served in a military that faces combat. His brother led the Entebbe rescue and practically wrote the text book on hostage rescue. He paid with his life but saved people. The younger brother wants to bomb the world and has no issues with ordinary Israelis dealing with missiles raining on them whilst he hides in the USA.

For me, a man who never fought or will (thank God) fight in a war, one incident of a friend coming home in a body bag was one incident too many. Too many old men talking about “big picture” forgetting that it’s the young guys who got pay for it. It was clear to me that the worst type of old man to be is the one that thinks its acceptable to act tough whilst getting the kids to face the consequences.