If This Be War
A time for choosing.
By Victor Davis Hanson, author most recently of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.
October 23, 2001 8:35 a.m.
o American wishes to contemplate the idea of war — the horrific circumstances in which our country could lose many of its most precious citizens in a brutal effort to kill other humans. War is tragic and it is unfair, and we must weigh very heavily any decision that results in our own being killed in efforts [far away] to kill others. Yet sadly, killing is what we have suffered, and war is what has been unleashed upon us — losses incurred on American soil far more grievous than those at Fort Sumter or Pearl Harbor, the powder kegs of our two worst conflagrations.
Indeed, the events of September 11 constitute the most devastating attack on the home soil of the United States in its long history. If the mass killing of thousands of our civilians in a time of peace, the destruction of our most hallowed buildings, the derailment of our economy, and the terror of germs that has nearly paralyzed parts of our government mean we are in a war, then a number of very difficult, but inescapable consequences must naturally follow.
Postwar Governments
Just as we would never have allowed a Goering, Rosenberg, or even Speer to join a postbellum coalition in conquered Germany, or General Tojo and his warlords to help reconcile factions in Japan in September 1945, or the North Korean Communists to share in a unified pan-Korean government, so too the very idea of the murderous Taliban taking part in the reconstruction efforts in Kabul is morally reprehensible and absurd. We cannot ask our young men and women to risk death to eliminate the Taliban, only later to allow them to enjoy the powers of government. If we bury Americans killed in Afghanistan, and then allow the mullahs of the Taliban to forget the past, we will have profaned the sacrifice and memory of our own dead. In this regard, the adamant condemnation of proposed Taliban inclusion by both Russia and India is to be held in higher regard than what has been offered so far from Europe and the United Nations — or some members of our own State Department.
Belligerents
If this were a war, we would not hesitate to end the evil in Iraq, where there is a history of germs brewed, missiles stockpiled, and the use of poison gas. We can insist on U.N. inspections of all suspect facilities in Iraq, and ask Baghdad to surrender its arsenal. When those reasonable proposals are rejected — as they will be — we should prepare to end the reign of terror of Saddam Hussein. Only that way can we correct the blunder of the last day of the Gulf War and turn Iraq from an autocracy to a democracy — a rebirth that might make a greater impression on Saudi Arabia and its ilk than did the prior nightmare.
Such a campaign is fraught with risks — crumbling coalitions, vulnerable flanks, logistical nightmares, depletion and scattering of our stretched-thin forces, the specter of tactical nuclear and germ warfare against our troops, more terrorism at home, domestic dissension, European repugnance, and a complete absence of allies. But if we are at war, if we wish to avenge our dead and ensure the safety of our children, we have no real choice, even as our eventual victory is not in doubt.
True, air power can wreck the Iraq military, but a ground invasion, aided by indigenous resistance movements from the current no-fly zones, is essential. The real lesson of the Gulf War was not merely that coalitions were critical to our success, but equally that by bringing aboard an assortment of dubious allies that were not critical for victory, we failed to go to Baghdad — and made no demands for Kuwait's medieval and cowardly government-in-exile to promise its citizens the eventual hope of consensual government. After the events of September 11, allowing Iraq to continue its dark work as before would be like not invading Italy in our war against Germany, or seeking to ignore Pearl Harbor while trying to marshal our desperately unprepared army against Hitler. There was a logic of sorts to both, but national purpose and common morality made us go after all three, and at once.
War Leaders and Their Language
If we were really at war, our national lexicon would reflect that seriousness of purpose. Americans would be told to brace for setbacks but always be assured of "victory." The candor and resolve of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld would not raise eyebrows — if this were really war. Stability in the Middle East is to be hoped for. We all pray for good relations with the Islamic peoples in dozens of countries — as our past aid to them against Communism, Iraqi fascism, and Serbian genocide attests. Americans wish the war to be short and without civilian casualties. We hope the elimination of terrorism will bring greater understanding of Islam and closer relations with Muslims in general. But right now those considerations — if we be at war — are secondary to victory and the abject defeat of our enemies: bin Laden's terrorists, the Taliban government, Iraq, and enclaves in Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, the Sudan, and the Philippines.
General Sherman — perhaps the most slandered and misunderstood figure in American history — accepted that his marches through Georgia would result in lasting negative public relations. But he also knew he was dismantling the infrastructure of a slave society at its heart, humiliating those who had called for his destruction, and — by his very audacity — killing few and losing less. At the beginning of his march, Sherman was told he would end up like Napoleon in Russia; a week later, those same plantation owners were begging him instead "to go over to the South Carolinians who started it." In war, reasoned and sober men like Halleck, Marshall, Eisenhower, Bradley, and Mark Clark are necessary to craft the organization of war, to marshal the powers of resistance, and occasionally to rein in the more mercurial and dangerous in our midst. But they do not, in themselves, bring us victory.
The defeat of our enemies in the dirt and carnage of war is accomplished by a different kind of men, themselves unsavory and often scary in their bluster and seriousness — the likes of Grant, Sherman, Patton, King, Halsey, LeMay, and a host of others still more uncouth. They speak differently, act differently, and think differently from most of us, but in war they prove to be our salvation, for they understand best its brutal essence — that real humanity in such an inhuman state of affairs is to use massive force to end the killing as quickly as possible. Men such as George S. Patton expect to offend us with their vocabulary, scare us with their assurance, and be relieved or discredited when we no longer need them. Thanks to them, in the luxury of victory and peace we can pretend we never really wanted to be [their] war makers at all. But now we have not yet achieved either victory or peace — and so we need the ghost of Patton more than ever.
Neutrals and Not-So-Neutrals
If we are really to be at war, it might be wise to worry more about bringing battle to our enemies wherever we find them, than fretting about warnings from neutrals, near-hostile governments, and frenzied but organized protest groups in Western countries. Muslim associations in European countries were cheering at the news of 6,000 American dead; posters of bin Laden continue to blanket the streets of the Middle East; funds for his killers are traced to banks in the Gulf — surely, in times of war, such open hostility means something. Our forefathers in World War II did not much worry about what the Spanish, the Turks, or those in Argentina felt about our war with Germany. They assumed that many of their elites were hostile to the Allies, that their governments would intervene to aid the Axis if victory was assured — and that only our annihilation of Nazism would keep them out of the war and in fear of us.
So, too, only resolute action and victory in Afghanistan and against Iraq and other terrorist enclaves will ultimately silence the hateful crowds, and convince the Palestinians, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia to change their ways — both to cease their direct aid to terrorists, and to stop transforming domestic dissent into nationalist fury against us. It is disingenuous to say that those of the Islamic media simply enjoy a free climate of critique like our own, when their governments encourage criticism of us, but not of the real, indigenous causes of their own misery. Promises of largess, coalition building, and assurances of our measured response and moderation are perhaps salutary in the present morass. But only victory will impress upon those who have funded the terrorists the need to stay neutral, get out of our way, and pray that in our systematic campaign against our enemies we do not at last turn our righteous anger against them.
Concern for Our Enemy
If by chance we were really to be at war — when, right now, Americans are parachuting into the dark to stop the killers responsible for the Trade Center attacks — then we would look upon those who seek to restrain U.S. retaliation in its proper wartime context. The director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Los Angeles, for example, wants greater disclosure from the White House about the details of the campaign, hinting that only fears of backlash prevent that organization from calling on America to cease the bombing altogether.
If we forget that the disclosure of such information would endanger the lives of American servicemen; if we pass on their misdirected emphasis away from the slaughter of thousands of Americans, to worry instead about the regime that helped kill them; if we ignore that all of the killers, and nearly all of those in custody by the FBI either for past bombings or for complicity with the present slaughter, are from the Middle East; if we choose not to mention that self-proclaimed Islamic fundamentalists operated freely within the American Muslim community and were sometimes aided through so-called Islamic charities — even then, we are still left with the disturbing fact that in a time of war, the Muslim Public Affairs committee is considering calling for an end to U.S. retaliation in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has already done essentially that by demanding an immediate end to the bombing that is directed at the terrorist bases and Taliban military — and is critical to reducing casualties among American ground forces.
We, of course, are a free and tolerant society, where expression of dissent is crucial to our national fabric. But good sense, and some shred of the old idea of patriotism, might at least caution against such petitions when we are at war against Islamic fundamentalists. Muslim organizations must not emulate the German-American groups of the late 1930s that criticized U.S. policy toward Nazi Germany. Once the firing started — as it has now — it would have been difficult to stomach German-American organizations organizing for a halt to B-17 raids over Berlin, or expressing angst about civilian casualties as Patton crossed the Rhine.
The Abyss
We are at the precipice of a war we did not seek. We can grimly cross over it, confident in our resolve, more concerned about our poor dead than the hatred of enemies or the worries of fickle neutrals, assured that our cause is just, and reliant on the fierce men of our military who seek no quarter and need no allies in their dour task. Or we can fall into the abyss, the well-known darkness of self-loathing, identity politics, fashionable but cheap anti-Americanism, ostentatious guilt, aristocratic pacifism, and a convenient foreign policy that puts a higher premium on material comfort than on the security of our citizens and the advancement of our ideals.
If we really are at war, let us perhaps have pity upon our doomed enemies. But after what we suffered on September 11, if we are not at war, then we should have pity upon ourselves for what we have become.
freerepublic.com |
