Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
We live in a time when people prefer equal results to equal opportunity. Everyone has to end up at the same place. Winning is not important, playing the game is all you need to do. In our all-inclusive, politically correct, everyone's a winner world, children's sports have done away with winners and losers and especially scoring points. If you are playing in a sport you are no better or worse than anyone else who is playing. No one loses, everyone gets a participation award. There is no competition involved. It is what I call non-competitive. And it's wrong.
Bad enough to indoctrinate children into believing this garbage, but when it oozes out into adult behavior it's more than wrong, it's dangerous. Which brings me to the point of this column (and I bet you thought I'd never get to it).
The ultimate competitive sport is war. In war there should be a winner and a loser. Period. If you don't have that, you have the Korean War (although a case could be made that North Korea actually won). And the subsequent wars that came after had no definitive winners either. Is participation enough to justify going to war?
There should be no participation trophies in war. President Trump (of whose policies I have mostly been in support of) has been, for months now, conducting a war with Iran which could easily be described as a non-competitive exercise. Winning does not appear to be the goal. It's as if Trump doesn't really want to win this war, he only wants a participation trophy.
Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal referenced someone who jokingly said that President Trump truly deserves the Nobel Prize because he has already ended the Iran war eight times. And now he's done it a ninth time. On again off again war is not a strategy for winning. I don't understand this way of waging war and I don't think most Americans do either.
Are we at war or are we in negotiations for a "deal?" One week it's "let's make a deal," the next week it's the war that will annihilate our enemy and destroy their entire civilization. Is President Trump Monty Hall or is he Winston Churchill? It's enough to make your head explode. As Ricky Ricardo might have said, "Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi."
Our world has become complicated. We have been taught that killing people in war is something we shouldn't do. It's bad. Well, yes it's bad. It's always been bad. But I don't know of any other way to win a war when you have an enemy who is dead set on destroying you and will not surrender under any circumstances. The Iranian Islamic regime wants to obliterate America, Israel, and all of Western civilization. They have told us this for years and it is commanded in their holy books. They will not "make a deal."
By nature I think President Trump does not want to engage in any wars. It goes against his principles. At the same time he knows that the sick Iranian regime is dangerous and will use any method they can lay their hands on to cause death and destruction to those not aligned with their theology. It must be a tough call for him. Add to that his many advisors who want Trump to end this war, either because of personal ideology or the political mid-term elections. I believe Trump feels torn and that is why he goes back and forth between dealing and warring.
All this dithering is making Americans nervous and unsure of the future. While the polls show that voters have soured on the war, the fact is that Americans love a winner. They always have. And they love being the winner in a war against bad guys. And these guys are as bad as they come. To my way of thinking, if Trump goes completely in on this war and ends the terrorist government in Iran once and for all, he ends up a major winner. If he pulls out and leaves the regime in place, he is a loser.
In war it is much better to be a winner than a loser. And so much better to be a winner than being a mere participant in a game without one or the other. A participation trophy just doesn't cut it. The only thing that makes you a winner, is winning.
(COMMENT, BELOW)