title:  Dear Trump: ISIS Is NOT A Football Game
text: When Donald Trump talks about America, he often talks about how we don t  win anymore.  We don t win on manufacturing. We don t win on trade. We don t win on economics. We don t win against ISIS. It s that last point I wish to address, because Trump said at a recent rally: Our military can t beat ISIS. Can you imagine the great General Douglas MacArthur or the great General George Patton saying we can t beat ISIS. Patton would rip your heart out if you ever said that. We can t beat   right? Can you imagine that though? Can you imagine what   they re spinning right now. They re watching. They re spinning in their grave. You, Donnie Trump, go on, and speak like MacArthur and Patton talk to you. You sound like you ve assured them you can win here, and you ll do them proud. Is that how you see it, Donnie?You re ignoring an awful lot there, Donnie. Neither MacArthur nor Patton behaved the way you do. They were tacticians, not juggernauts who rolled to victory in every single engagement. They knew when to steamroll, and when to pull back and regroup. In your crusade against anything that even remotely looks like weakness, you ve taught your dense and idiotic followers that winning against ISIS is as simple as a football game.Simply act like we can win, and we ll win.I m sure that our dear Mr. Trump does not see anything wrong with talking this way. After all, nothing he ever does is wrong. Period. End of. However, the problem is not how he sees it. The problem is the message he s putting forth. He s treating war, and terrorism, like they re football games. If we just think positively, believe we can win, and stop acting like we can t beat ISIS, we ll beat them handily.That s not true.Generals Patton and MacArthur were so successful in part because they were realistic. There were massive failures during WWII. We did not ride in on this white horse to save the day. However, Donnie disgustingly buys into that very narrative.We didn t.MacArthur was already in the Philippines when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. In the ensuing months, he suffered grievous defeats. He actually ordered a withdrawal to Australia to regroup. He was human. His troops were human. Japan was a juggernaut at the time, and we couldn t beat them with brute force.What do you think of that, Donnie? MacArthur actually ordered a retreat. Isn t that giving up? Isn t that what you re railing against? MacArthur is remembered as great because of things like this. Not in spite of them, and definitely not because they didn t happen.Then there s Patton. He does seem to have been more the style that you see in your head. For instance, he s reported to have said: We shall attack and attack until we are exhausted, and then we shall attack again. Yet he was surrounded by controversy over his leadership methods. Congress and the military actually demanded his removal from command after he slapped a soldier who was suffering from battle fatigue. There were other such incidents, too, but his qualifications are what kept him in the field. He might have stormed through battle zones like Bastogne (do you even know which battle that was, Donnie?), ending them, but he was far from perfect.Donnie, all you do is talk about winning and losing, and yet, nobody has ever conceded defeat to ISIS. Nobody in U.S. leadership has said,  We can t beat ISIS.  Not our president, not our current commanders. A coach telling his football team  We can t do this,  hands the game to the other team. Our military doesn t operate like that, however. It never has. It operates with the understanding that there will be defeats. Learning from those defeats is key to beating ISIS   something you would know if you weren t such a conceited bastard.On the ground, unit commanders, all the way down to squad leaders, will give pep talks. Yes, that is normal, and you and I both know it. However, those who are guiding the entire war have to be realistic, or they will end up losing it, and they know it.It s not a football game.ISIS is not WWII, and it s definitely not a game, Donnie. Your treating it as such doesn t just show astonishing arrogance, but it also shows that you re wholly unqualified to be the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military. You will never be able to understand how anything works as long as you keep treating everything as winning versus losing.As though it s a goddamn football game. It s not. Featured image by Joe Raedle/Getty Images