ArcaMax

Way back there in the 1700s and the 1800s, the British conquered a big chunk of the world thanks to their navy, which was crewed by whip-scarred, toothless, unwilling sailors with untreated syphilis.

That's who you want to fight your wars. No one fights like mistreated men living on a diet of garbage, the lash and below-decks rape.

That's why the draft worked so well; you didn't have to be a patriot to serve, you just had to stand still long enough for them to get their hands on you.

The enlisted are a pain in the rear admiral. They expect decent and frequent food. They want clean clothing and working toilets. They demand medical care and ice cream. They want a pension and a lifetime of free eyeglasses, and they expect to be perpetually "thanked" for their service.

Out there in the Strait of Hormuz, where America fights for the sacred cause of Jeffrey Epstein, grim reports are coming out about sailors driven to the brink of suicide because they've been deployed for nine months, and the kitchen is out of Captain Crunch.

Flog 'em. Tie them to something sturdy and whip 'em bloody.

That's how those three-cornered hat and snobby accent Brits did it back in the day. If you got out of line on their ships, they tied you up, and one of the sturdier sailors put 20 lashes on you. You bled, you screamed, you passed out.

Aye, me hearties, those people knew how to run a navy.

There were no "deployments." You got on the ship, you headed out for a couple of years, and they let you off when the ship got back, if it got back, and you were still alive.

During your cruise, you ate half-rotten salt meat, biscuits crawling with worms and water kept so long in a barrel that it was alive with a variety of invisible and not-so-invisible life. When you did make port, you were encouraged to get wildly drunk and infect the local women with sexually transmitted diseases no one in their country knew about.

What Americans now know, thanks to 80 years of constant defeat, is that the better you treat your soldiers and sailors, the more likely they are to either lose a war or fight a draw.

We fed 'em garbage in World War II and they whipped the world. We did battlefield surgery with a handsaw and mouthful of bad whiskey, and they freed the slaves. Now, we load 'em up on pizza and soft serve ice cream, and they can't whip Afghanistan.

You want winners? Treat them like the dregs of your population.

There's probably going to be an ineffectual congressional investigation into "conditions" aboard American ships, but you'd get more out of a blood-soaked whip, some bad water and a barrel full of moldy salt pork.

Of course, there are women on navy ships now, but who says you can't flog a woman? If you flog women, and you're smart enough to get video, members of Congress will be eager to view the evidence. In private. After dark. In the company of one of their interns. This is assuming that members of Congress wouldn't rather see young boys flogged, which is a damn big assumption.

When the proud, toothless, syphilitic members of the new American navy receive their orders to deploy, one of them may ask, "How long will the deployment last?"

That sailor will be flogged until you can see the bones in his back. As we've learned from President Donald Trump, all questions are treasonous. Only passive agreement is patriotic.

Sometimes, when we think things are rough in America, we're reminded of how "strong families" made it through the Great Depression on a diet of Jesus and cornbread with a little nearly spoiled milk on the side.

Poverty makes you strong. Abuse makes you capable. Hunger makes you happy. Prescription drugs and vaccines are for weaklings.

Less is more. This is true for everything except flogging. With flogging, more is always more.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.