On the rifle range in Basic Training in 1972 our drill sergeant
yelled, "Kill a Commie for Mommy."
But in the late stages of the Vietnam War, and throughout the Iraq War, Afghanistan War, and other conflicts in the War on Terror, there are rules about who, what, when and where American soldiers can fire at the enemy.
My job in the Air Force was live-fire testing of missiles from the Sidewinder all the way to the Minuteman. We made sure those missiles were ready to shoot down a MiG or obliterate a city.
In the Army, I trained my tank crew to make one-shot kills of Soviet tanks at up to a mile distance. There was no ROE. If the Soviets crossed the border we were to kill them. They were the enemy, the identifiable, uniformed enemy who was going to kill us if we did not kill them.
When we had an enemy, we had a goal: Defeat the enemy.
I wrote on the New York Times "At War" blog about how having an enemy, or not, affects marching songs. In the 1970s when we marched, we sang about killing Commies. They were the enemy. The current marching songs have no enemy. Current marching songs also have no sex. For those of us who marched in the 70s and before, the idea of marching songs scrubbed of sex is as strange as those without enemies.
All through my professional life, in or out of the military, my best work was when I had a goal--and a leader with a clear idea of what winning looked like.
The wars we won--World War II and the Cold War--had an enemy and a goal: Victory.
The current wars are a mess because the goal is murky. When the American military goes to war, we should be fighting to win.
