I Was Wrong: A War Writer’s Reflections On History

I’ve been wrong about a lot of things in my life. I used to believe that Jesus was a crutch for weak-minded fools, abortion was a nice safety net for momentary slip ups, and pornography was no big deal. I like to think that post-salvation, I’ve corrected the navigational headings on all of those ships. But even after being born again I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, including my two main areas of study: history and war.

Before we get going, know that I absolutely recognize the need to maintain a fierce and highly equipped force of sheepdogs, ready to keep the wolves at bay. Any nation not ready to fight at a moment’s notice is a target in waiting, and it will be exploited in time; 2A every day. But as for sending our men and women overseas to engage in never ending preemptive operations against nominal threats, leaving them vulnerable and often isolated should the SHTF…I’m over that. It needs to end, and soon, before more of our troops get led into situations they never should have been subjected to in the first place.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander of WW2 and 34th President of the United States

Check Your Emotions

Talking heads on “conservative” media, even church leaders from the pulpit, have started clamoring for us to support another war (or wars) against the latest maniacal boogiemen without much insight or contemplation over what we’ve seen over the past several years. If recent history has taught us anything, it’s to reject the first story you’re told about any topic. Now, voices who recently stood against increasing police-state authority and for individual liberties (like free speech, political association, and religious exemptions) are proposing the heavy hand of government be unleashed against those they disagree with. Sadly, it didn’t take long for the deep-pocketed puppet masters and Federally trained infiltrators to direct us against one another. We took the bait again — just like with Ukraine, just like with the BLM riots.

The enemy feeds on our unchecked emotions and wants us shaking our fists before sober investigations can begin, sending weapons and troops into war on multiple fronts. What’s next? Taiwan? Another 9/11 event?

We’ve fallen for this too many times in the past. I’ve fallen for this too often in the past.

A Historian’s Journey

Until recently, I was quick to support every war our leaders demanded.

It didn’t take much convincing for me to jump onto the down with so and so bandwagon. I was wrong, maybe you were too, and it’s something we should consider as elements in Washington D.C. and Tel Aviv stir up an already muddy tank.

Growing up near Gettysburg, PA made me a blue-capped Yankee kid, ready to show Johnny Reb who was boss. I thrashed the spiky thorn bushes to smithereens with my plastic war sword singing Battle Hymn of the Republic. Even as an adult, in my simplistic worldview the Confederates were slavers, and slavery is evil, so that was that.  It wasn’t until much later in life that I learned there were complex issues regarding the American Civil War of which slavery was merely the most prominent.

For me, the Second World War was also pretty cut and dry; a simple case of good versus evil. The Nazis were evil, so were the Japanese, and our guys had to kill them to save the world.

The fact that Stalin was our ally in defeating that maniac Hitler was one of those subtle tidbits historians tend to zip past, along with the uncomfortable truth of the German war machine being largely built Ford tough, with Henry Ford raking in millions by equipping both sides.

Does that sound familiar?

I didn’t focus much on FDR’s encroachments against individual liberty before or during that time period, either. “Isolationist” was a dirty word when “the greatest generation” was being confronted by the greatest evil up to that point in time. Did anyone question the erosion of Constitutional liberties while the war distracted the masses into handing them over, willy-nilly?

Do you hear many voices warning about lost liberty and free speech today?

Gen X Goes to War

All boys desire a battle to fight — a dragon to slay, a people to save — and my generation was no different. Gen X was also keenly aware of how much the Vietnam Era warriors (our fathers and uncles) were slandered by the anti-war radicals of the 1960s. We saw how they treated John Rambo in First Blood, watched the anti-war films like The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now, and vowed to be better patriots when our time came.

Our history textbooks were filled with tales of ‘60s college demonstrations conducted by low-information middle-class kids unschooled in communist terror — spurred on by faculty communists, some things never change — calling our troops “baby killers.”

I hated the images of those hippie activists smearing the men and women willing to put on a uniform. If my generation ever needed to fight a war against those maniac Russians, I would either join up myself or support the war efforts wholeheartedly.

When the Gulf War began, I was a freshman in high school and all-in on the military industrial complex. The more tanks the better. Send ‘em over, and fry that maniac Saddam.

I didn’t think much about us leaving him in power and abandoning the Kurds to deal with his retribution. It would be years before I recognized the pattern of how Washington “rewards” its allies after the flag waving subsides —  the South Vietnamese in 1975, the Cubans after the Bay of Pigs in 1960, handing Poland over to the Soviets in 1945, rejecting Filipino independence in 1899, etc.

It wasn’t on my radar. When suits in D.C. said we needed to fight a war, that we needed to put our men in harm’s way for whatever reason, I bought it. And good Americans supported it.

After the Gulf War came Somalia: Maniac warlords were stealing U.N. aid shipments. That’s evil, send in our boys. 

And again with terrorist maniacs in Sudan and Afghanistan: Send in a carrier group; Tomahawk missile them to death.

Or with that maniac Milosevic ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. We couldn’t stand idly by with ethnic cleansing going on: Air war. Apaches and SOF if necessary.

I cheered all of it, never bothering to ask the five Ws: who, what, where, when, why.

• Who are we attacking (or supporting)?

•  What did each side actually do to cause it, and what are our mission objectives?

•  Where is the evidence to back up those claims?

•  When can we act, declare victory, and conclude our involvement?

•  Why does this necessitate American blood and treasure?

Military planners may have assessed all of these factors, but the public didn’t. They didn’t matter. Bad guys needed killing and that was that.

I avoided the hard conversations from the peacenik Karens of the ‘90s asking,  “What about that maniac Edi Amin? Didn’t he ethnic cleanse Uganda and didn’t the CIA fund him to continue it? Or how about the maniac rebels ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, also funded by the CIA through Uganda? 

Shut up, Karen. Less talkie, more bombie.

I was always quick to support the latest war no matter where it was, and equally quick to dismiss and argue with anyone who wasn’t as enlightened about the current threats as I was. Afterall, I watched Nightline! And subscribed to U.S. News & World Report!

After 9/11 it seemed all of us were on board, and the few holdouts calling it a Middle East land grab were pushed aside. I recall arguing on Facebook with discerning Christians proposing we pump the brakes on invading Iraq. They were right, I was wrong.

Fool Us Once

We were lied to, about almost everything. You saw it, you’ve experienced it, and deep down you know they’re still lying.

They lied about Covid, the elections, the vaccines, Ivermectin, Twitter, Epstein, Ukraine, biolabs, Russiagate, Hunter’s laptop, J6, face masks, JFK, the Las Vegas shooting, Trump, Benghazi, Snowden, the MLK assasination, AIDS, George Floyd, Gulf War Syndrome, Maui fires, East Palestine OH, Hillary’s emails, MK Ultra, Pat Tillman, Niger, Assange, Iran Contra, Ray Epps…and so much more.

And yes, they even lied about 9/11, Oklahoma City, and Waco.

So ask yourself: Are they now finally telling you the whole truth about Israel and Palestine? About October 7th and Gaza? About China and banning TikTok?

No, they’re not, and you know they’re not. So apply that.

When the brain trust in Washington and Israel, on Fox News and CNN, on Instagram and Twitter begin spouting out the latest talking points for us to accept at face value, push back and demand details. Reject the first reports as a rule and be skeptical of the latest news, especially when it’s parroted across platforms.

When they bombard us with videos of atrocities overseas and demand us to intervene militarily, remember how they manufactured BS footage in Ukraine (even video game footage), recycled photoshopped images, and censored independent journalists.

Never forget how the U.S. military brass has repeatedly lied to the faces of multiple Gold Star families about Afghanistan, Benghazi, Niger, and elsewhere.

When idiot kids begin chanting despicable things on college campuses about Jews and Israel, remember how many of the same actors burned down cities in 2020, under orders from the same George Soros-funded organizations, and for the same reason: to distract us from the actual battles this nation needs to be fighting, like an unperturbed invasion from genuine jihadists, or the political persecution of American citizens.

When people you’ve come to respect start banging the war drum, arguing that we need to send our men and women back onto foreign battlefields to preserve…something…ask yourself if these same people were on board with closing churches, forced vaccinations, and requiring your kids to suffer respiratory trauma and isolation based on bad science they refused to question.  

Then tell them no, and demand they bring our warriors home to protect us from the army that is daily walking unmolested across the southern border and quickly dispersing into every major city in the country.

History is Messy

“Our world is crying out for it. In times like these — marked by cultural decay, the unraveling of the principles that made our nation  great, and widespread hopelessness and despair — we need men of moral  courage more than ever.”

Col. John Ripley, USMC Medal of Honor recipient, Vietnam

We toss around the terms “good guys” and “bad guys” quite liberally and inaccurately, as any true historian will tell you. That’s because history is never cut and dry; there is always nuance in the motivations of the principle players, and outside actors manipulate the theater of war to their own benefit.

ISIS, Hamas, the Taliban, and communists worldwide are populated by genocidal maniacs bent on murdering anyone who opposes them. That exists.

The ISF and American military are guilty of allowing attacks, indiscriminately murdering civilians, and even abandoning their own troops and covering it up afterward. That also exists.

Both things can be true simultaneously, and it’s not anti-semetic or anti-American to point it out. It’s history; learn it and deal with it.

So what do we do with that reality? How do we reconcile the need to give homicidal maniacs a dirt nap with the sober patience necessary hold our fire until we’re positive our target is worth the consequences?

Pray, for one thing, but also learn the history.

If you can, get into conversations with people who live in those places the mob wants to bomb into oblivion. Learn about the people and communities who will suffer the most from economic sanctions and forever war raining down on their heads.

There are lots of Christians in Gaza, Russia, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, China, Ukraine and elsewhere pleading on social media for a chance to live in peace. Listen to their stories, hear their perspectives. There are millions of peaceful Muslims across the world who equally deserve that chance, even if they choose to reject Jesus.

If you find yourself glued to war porn from a single source, you might try checking out what the other side is saying about it. The truth is always somewhere in the middle, and the media and intelligence agencies like the CIA and Mossad are always, constantly, 100% of the time, manufacturing narratives to suit purposes only they know about.

Perhaps in the conflagration of emotions and accusations, a few adults having respectful conversations can break through that barrier and attain the clarity denied previous generations of a disconnected world. We can counter the lies in real time. And we need to start doing it. We certainly don’t need more rhetoric of demonisation. And simplistic prescriptions to centuries-old problems are just as foolhardy.

I adore the men and women in uniform. They picked up a gun, said goodbye to their families, and agreed to stand between me and the wolves. It was their stories that inspired me to write a historical fiction series of modern war books. In my books I often refer to generic “bad guys” or “the enemy” and they were plenty bad, to be sure.

Today I weep for our new crop of fighting men and women, kids really, who are caught in the middle of supernatural and geopolitical forces that most of them don’t even comprehend. I pray these young people get better leadership, and soon, because as much as I hate to admit it, I was wrong about much of the history that motivated them to join up. And I was wrong about the solutions for keeping America safe and free. Unless we keep studying, and learning, and growing, we’ll get this one wrong too. We simply can’t afford that.

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My latest book, Those Who Face Death, is now available online wherever books are sold. This is the fourth book in the Modern War series.

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