Hi jamok99; Thanks for the intelligent and sensitive reply.
Yes, my suggestion, that in order to eliminate conflict, it is sometimes necessary that the stronger party completely dominate the other through the use of force, is brutal. But this is the way that the world has always worked. As the Athenians explained to that obscure island city state whos name evades me now, "we did not create this rule, it was there before us. And as far as we can tell, everyone who had it available to them before us used it also." [Thucydides, I think.]
In our case, we need only use this rule to the extent that it protects our own lives and safety. And does it work?
Your examples with (1) the Palestinians, (2) the Ghost Dancers, and (3) the Germans after WW1 all miss the point.
(1) The Palestinians are not completely downtrodden. They (rationally!!!) believe that they will win in the end. They can see that their situation is improving while Israel's situation is getting worse. They can see the "success" of the Taliban in Afghanistan against a world power. So they continue to fight. And that fighting contributes to their plight.
(2) The Ghost Dancers were explicitly a religious promise of victory. They were not a promise of dying gloriously in a lost cause. As soon as it became clear that the romantic promise of the Ghost Dancers was an illusion, it went away.
(3) The deliberate economic destruction of Germany after WW1 was a bad idea, but it was only a factor in parallel with the incomplete nature of her military defeat. I agree that both factors contributed to Hitler's rise.
How we got into this unenviable situation is an interesting thing to discuss at a theoretical level, but it has no practical use at this time. My own feeling on it is that we should have extricated ourselves completely from the Middle East at the end of the Cold War. I wanted an isolationist America. I didn't get it. Maybe, when we get done with this, we'll return to our traditional role of letting the world stew in its own juices instead of being it's policeman and trying to tell everybody else how to get along, make their food, treat their women, etc. But I don't have much hope for that, and that's not the current problem.
The same reasoning applies to the Ghost Dancers. The whole problem could possibly have been avoided by a more fair and just policy towards the Indians, but knowing that was only theoretically useful after the Indians convinced themselves that they could push the invaders off the continent:
The prophets told the depressed people that through the Ghost Dance their dead families, friends and way of life would return, the "white men" and "bad" Indians would be drowned in a big flood and life would return to the way it was before the Euro-American invasion.
ghostdancers.com
Once a weaker people are able to convince themselves that they're going to win, there is no choice but to let them win or kill sufficiently large numbers of them that it becomes obvious that the promised miracle is a mirage.
Your comparisons of this situation with Vietnam and the Revolutionary War are seriously flawed. In both those cases, the "weaker" party was allied with a superpower (or two). These were not wars in and of themselves, they were localized conflicts in a superpower situation. In Vietnam, the supporting superpowers were China and the Soviet Union. The same applies to Korea. In the American Revolution, the supporting superpower was France. I hate to have to tell you this, but the United States couldn't have done it on their own. That's why when the U.S. returned the favor to France in 1917, they said "Lafayette, we are here."
In addition, you ignore the voluminous evidence that suggests that the overwhelming winners in warfare don't have to do it again. Did the South rise up again? How long has it been since Mexico has come back for more? Is the U.S. still carrying on a guerilla conflict with Spain? Did Paraguay mess around twice with the Triple Alliance? Are the Argentines still invading the Malvinas? Are the Ghost Dancers still shooting up the settlers? No! I could go on, but I think that's enough.
Re the 100 years war. The worst, most long lived, wars are the ones between equally matched foes. The classic modern example would be the Iran Iraq war, where due to a brutal real politic situation, whichever side was losing would get assistance from the rest of the world community. If we'd just let one or the other win the result would have been a lot less tragic. (I was outraged that we kept them going that way. I believe that if you sow wind, you reap the whirlwind.) Anyway, the way you avoid 100 year long wars is simple. Avoid fighting except when you have overwhelming force. There's some theoretical work that suggests that the reason that the Democracies tend to be so successful in war is that they only fight when either forced to, or when they possess overwhelming strength.
I am truly bereaved that we have come to this. But looking at the situation through defeatist (or rose colored) glasses isn't going to fix anything. We are at war. If you want to wait and have a bigger conflict with a better prepared enemy, go for peace now. It worked for Chamberlain.
As far as what we will do to the territories we occupy, I hope that we will install new governments. In the Gulf War, we chose not to, and it didn't work out too well. But the United States has a pretty good history of exporting Democracy by force. In this case, it's our best solution.
-- Carl |
