A little late, maybe, but I won.

It’s funny; I won a war game of the Falklands War quite handily as the Argentineans.

I parked the Argy fleet of ex-World War II rust buckets in three- and four-ship packets at all the Falklands landfalls, and used its modern Air Force very sparingly just to protect the Argentine coast (shorter flights, more missions, better coordination, more loitering/dogfighting capability; most importantly, a final kamikaze reserve kept carefully intact). As I lost ships, I shuffled the survivors around so that Stanley remained a deadly flak trap against low-flying, not-so-fast Harriers I shot down in droves, fouling their bombing runs and eventually chasing them away. I sank the Brit nuke sub in shallow water when it tried to sneak into Stanley Harbor and torpedo my Belgrano flagship (subs are much more vulnerable there, despite their high-tech).

When the British fleet maneuvered close inshore to make a landing, I flung all my ships against it (a short hop: too short for the Brits to react effectively) and sank its pocket aircraft carrier in a conventional gun/torpedo battle. The Brits never made a landing; if they had, my surviving close-support naval artillery would have made their task ten times hotter. That left the Argentine Army and jet Air Force intact, no successful Brit bombardment, no attrition losses. I lost quite a few Argy ships and prop planes in the process, but the UK lost the war, hands down – barring nukes.

No big deal. I just used my Argentine assets so as to optimize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Argentina could have done much the same under the command of other than fascist idiots. The USA, now, likewise. When you’re Mohammed Ali, you dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee; you don’t stand planted there with your jaw hanging out for some bruiser to dislocate in his own sweet time.

The thing about “internal security” operations is, it rots out the military from the most brass-laden honcho down to the last common trooper; turns them into bullies, self-serving shirkers, thieves, liars, cowards and tactical idiots. They cannot stand against an equivalent military force uncontaminated by it. They turn into a gaggle of gangsters with no loyalty, trust, sense of sacrifice or focus on the common good; the few remaining good ones among them quit in disgust, throw their lives away on the cheap, turn stoner or stand back and let the rest hang themselves.

Never confound military honor with militarist fascism; the two are self-contradictory. Military honor is a vital strategic benefit for any healthy society; it can rot away at the slightest infusion of fascism. Lose it and you lose for good. Thank God, or by now we would all be corpses stacked in the concentration camps, toe-tagged by the meticulous sociopaths that history seems to produce inevitably; or just nuclear war survivors chipping radioactive rocks for our next meal.

Military honor is the only thing that checks this spiral into chaos. What are categorically anti-military peaceniks going to use? Your good looks? You’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

March 3, 2007 -- Switzerland and Lichtenstein go to war!

March 2, 2007 – A company of Swiss Militia got lost during night maneuvers and wandered across the (unmarked, unfortified) border of Lichtenstein. They hadn’t realized where they’d wound up until they strayed into a nearby village, got their bearings and quietly withdrew home.

Results, awkwardness all around (Lichtenstein has no Army). A thorough chewing-out, no doubt, for the Company Commander in question after his Battalion and Regimental COs were informed of how badly he had embarrassed the hallowed traditions of the martial Swiss. It is said there is nothing more dangerous than a junior officer maneuvering his tight-reined unit with a map and compass by twilight. Casualties: none beyond a few bruised egos and sore muscles. Damage: zero. Strategic threat: zero.

A few laughs for the rest of us, a momentary break from our daily grief over serial massacres around the world, while everyone looks on via TV without doing anything serious to stop it.

In short, Switzerland and Lichtenstein just suffered my kind of war, the kind that would be commonplace on PeaceWorld. Heavily armed, highly skilled soldiers training hard so their country would never, ever be invaded again. All the local civilians peacefully asleep in their snug homes, never suspecting their lives were in danger from foreign invaders because the whole peril would be patently absurd. Everyone goes home with apologies all around.

On PeaceWorld, everyone everywhere would be protected by heavily armed local Militias on the Swiss Model: local youths well paid, harshly trained and superbly equipped to confront any Aggressor. The World Court would ensure strategic security as reliably as the EU government ensures peace between European countries. No serious international threats, no terrorism beyond sensation-seeking theatrics, no more military crackdowns against helpless civilians. Ever. Any hint of such would be forbidden and swiftly punished by the World Court until organized warfare between any two groups on Earth would be as unthinkable as between Switzerland and Lichtenstein.

No more Palestinian and/or Israeli massacres. No more millions of African war casualties, not even dozens. No more fundamentalist Mujadeen… well, some Mujadeen might continue to fight in Afghanistan and nearby (since no one has ever found another hobby they would abide by), but they’d do so in isolation among themselves and at the expense of their own neighbors until their wisest tribal leaders saw reason in peace.

All this is entirely within our actual political, communications and military means. It would be a question of a few months’ massive reeducation by the global orthodox media of the world, then massive reorganization of the world’s war fighting capabilities. We refuse to make it happen because we are politically powerless by choice. If enough Learners chose to check it out, no one on Earth could stop us until PeaceWorld were an everyday certainty.

March 2, 2011 – Heavily armed units of Palestinian or Israeli, Sri Lankan, Somali or American, Chechen or Russian, Central African -- pick your most fearsome military tough guys -- penetrate foreign borders during night-time maneuvers. Casualties: zero. Damage: zero. Strategic threat: zero. The slumbers of local civilians aren’t even disturbed and everyone goes home casting apologies all around. Headlines on the hour.

http://peaceworld.110mb.com/300WORLDMILITIA.htm

I ask you: What the Hell are we waiting for?