Why Is Our Military Not Being Rebuilt?
The case for a total war.

By Adam G. Mersereau

...If we are going to win a total victory in the war on terrorism while deterring other major wars around the globe, we will first have to rid ourselves of our aversion to total war.

By "total" war, I mean the kind of warfare that not only destroys the enemy's military forces, but also brings the enemy society to an extremely personal point of decision, so that they are willing to accept a reversal of the cultural trends that spawned the war in the first place...

This is frequently mis-attributed to Michael Ledeen, but the latter said:

Again and again we were dragged into war, and we invariably tossed our enemies onto history's trash heap of failed lies. We wage total war, because we fight in the name of an idea -- freedom -- and ideas either triumph or fail.

...and, of course, there is Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle:

ZNet | Foreign Policy | The Colder War (by John Pilger)

Vice President Dick Cheney, the voice of Bush, has said the US is considering military or other action against "40 to 50 countries" and warns that the new war may last 50 years or more. A Bush adviser, Richard Perle, explained. "(There will be) no stages," he said.

 

"This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there ... If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now."