PROGRESS REPORT
URL: opinionjournal.com
Finish the War
And recognize how well it's already going.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Tuesday, September 17, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
There are lulls in all wars. Even successful militaries must take their breath, as they redirect their efforts to additional theaters, reassess past performance, stockpile supplies, seek out new allies and wait for opportune weather.
Wars, by their very nature, are different from the drama of individual battles. Even during infamously bloody conflicts such as the Peloponnesian and Punic Wars, the American Civil War and World War II, there were long periods of relative calm. Indeed, such intervals of apparent peace often mystify historians. In retrospect, they sometimes cannot distinguish the real beginning, duration, or end of a war. Thucydides seems initially to have been confused whether the Peloponnesian War had ceased with the Peace of Nicias (421 B.C.) and then restarted a few years later--or, in fact, had constituted a three-decade-long continuum all along.
Like the European theater of World War II--which saw the U.S. invade North Africa, then take months to progress to Sicily, after which there was another pause before Italy and the invasion of Normandy--we are currently fighting a multi-theater conflict on the other side of the world. Our foes are not easily identifiable as nation-states like Germany and Italy; and we have as yet few allies who wish to fight alongside us. We must invade, conquer and pacify an enormous country; Saddam Hussein's Iraq merely needs to resist and not lose.
But despite this recent letup, the first year of the present war has been a spectacular success--one rarely paralleled in military history. For all our worries about the fragility of the Karzai government and the continual terrorism in Kabul, the military phase of the Afghan theater is nearing an end. Pacification is increasingly turned over to security forces and international development officers.
It is time to reflect on the course of the fighting: In less than two months, the U.S. destroyed a most repressive regime. We fought without convenient bases or ports, 7,000 miles away--and against a landlocked, mountainous, and unfamiliar land whose cold peaks and warring tribes had held at bay formidable invading armies from the 19th-century British to the present-day Russians.
At the cost of a few dozen casualties, we deposed the medieval Taliban, routed the al Qaeda terrorists from their caves and then mobilized governments--whether allied, neutral or often hostile--to arrest enemy killers. The dismantling of terrorist cells is now almost a daily occurrence in Europe, Asia and the U.S. And despite the efforts of enraged bombers, hijackers and assassins in the world's major cities, so far only a few Westerners have been lost to terrorist reprisals.
The liberation of Iraq is more a question of when, not if. Even the delay in reckoning with Saddam has produced some positive effects. The administration has refined its casus belli both here and abroad. The onus is now shifting to our allies and international bodies: Why have they allowed Iraq to violate accords and stockpile weapons of mass destruction in a post-9/11 world where there is no longer any margin of safety?
In a more narrow military sense, the dictatorship in Iraq is being strangled--psychologically, economically and materially. Yet it is finding contempt rather than sympathy, as is the case with all bullies who at last meet their betters. Despite fervent calls, no foreign legions are flocking to Iraq's aid from the Arab world. As the U.S. carefully articulates the case for action, ratcheting up the pressure, and the realization sets in that Saddam is doomed, some of his key adherents will weigh their own futures and prefer possible flight rather than a noose.
The ultimate significance of wars is sometimes apparent even before the conclusion of the last battle. Athenian imperialism was a spent force well before the end of the Peloponnesian War. The idea of chattel slavery was dead after Gettysburg. No one believed in either the power or future of German Nazism after Stalingrad and Normandy. By the same token, the easy destruction of the Taliban and dispersion of al Qaeda have rendered militant Islamic fundamentalism impotent in the eyes of the world--with sobering effects on a supposedly volatile Arab street that so often puts a premium on power and prestige rather than on reason and justice.
America's rapid autumn success, coupled with the steady vigilance of spring and summer--and the current mounting pressure on Iraq--have also brought taboo subjects suddenly to the fore. Saudi Arabia, the once-sacred petroleum cow, must begin to reform or face an America furious over its proven duplicity. Israel's friendship is proving resolute; Yasser Arafat's kindred bombers are in hiding. Europe's easy criticism of American unilateralism increasingly looks questionable; pre-emptory strikes against Afghanistan brought salvation, not the promised doom--and reminded our allies that past interventions in Panama, Grenada and Serbia made things better, not worse.
Indeed, our strong and successful reaction to Sept. 11 has placed sworn allies, not just us, under scrutiny--as they embarrassingly juggle the desire for continued American military protection with their own glaring reluctance to pursue enemies as deadly to Europe as they are to us. The greater amorality in this war has arisen more from inaction than from our use of force.
The present criticism of our conduct of the war is not empirically based. Instead, our frustrations are fed by the very rising expectations brought about by unexpectedly quick and easy victories. The impressive power of our forces has made us forget the age-old difficulties of terrain, weather, distance and supply with which we have been forced to contend. GPS weapons blasting away one house and not its neighbor, Special Forces with laptops on horseback, and crack pilots taking off at night for 1,000-mile missions tend to obscure just how far the war is from our shores, how deadly are our enemies, and how much more difficult it is for us to win rather than for our enemies not to lose.
Yet the present hypercriticism itself is also neither new nor necessarily pernicious. During the Civil War, Meade's failure to destroy Lee's broken army after Gettysburg raised hysteria that such caution had prolonged the war. But his inaction did not detract from the North's undeniable achievement of invading and conquering a region the size of Western Europe in less than four years. We lament that the Falaise Gap was not immediately closed in summer 1944 and, worse, that Patton's gasoline and supplies were curtailed as he was poised to batter his way over the Rhine before the snowfall and a German recovery. Nevertheless, the very idea that the Allies could fight their way onto the beaches of France, and then less than a year later in May 1945 find themselves 1,000 miles eastward, accepting the Nazi surrender in the heart of Germany, remains the truly astounding fact.
It is commendable that we are perfectionists and wish not merely success, but a victory as instantaneous as it is absolute. But that should not blind us to the fact that we are still mere humans, and in that sense doing a pretty good job so far.
Mr. Hanson is the author, most recently, of "An Autumn of War," just out from Anchor Books. |
