VDH on postmodern war

In a lengthy, detailed, and intellectual article, Victor David Hanson discusses Postmodern War:



"Thus a weaker enemy can hope to persuade or frighten a majority of its adversary’s citizens to reject the war party, and to come to its terms or simply quit, by such means as the rather crude Soviet Union propaganda efforts in the cold war or by appealing to deep-seated Western pacifism. More recently, terrorists have grasped that the enormous wealth and privilege of Western society in the postwar half century have convinced many Americans and Europeans that avoiding war altogether, rather than preparedness and deterrence, is critical to maintaining their present tranquillity. Usama bin Ladin’s own fatwas invoke America’s purported inability to take casualties, while Saddam Hussein stockpiled morale-boosting DVD copies of Black Hawk Down, on the logic that the movie showed how irregulars in block-to-block fighting might force conventional American troops to go home by shattering their leaders’ morale."



The article is long, but certainly worth the read. He accurately describes the sentiments of many Americans that lead them to be frustrated with the length of the Iraqi War and the number of the casualties. America has remained relatively safe, notwithstanding 9/11, and does not understand what it is like to live under the constant threat of violence. If we were in the situation Israel is in, I think we would be much more supportive of Pres. Bush and the War on Terror. We are far to comfortable in America and have forgotten what our fathers paid for our liberty. VDH makes the following conclusion:



"Modern Western man is faced with this awful dilemma, from which he recoils: real peace and successful reconstruction are in direct proportion to the degree that an enemy is humiliatingly defeated and so acknowledges it—the aim being that he will come to feel that he cannot go on being what he has been. To that end, absolute victory may encompass everything from Hiroshima to bombing downtown Belgrade as the price for tranquillity and a democratic and humane postbellum Japan and the Balkans. Not finishing off a defeated Republican Guard in 1991 or sparing looters in April 2003 or breaking off the siege of Fallujah in April 2004 only ensures that more corpses will pile up later. President Bush’s so-called Axis of Evil in 2002—Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—all had in common unfinished business with the U.S. military that had led to a bellum interruptum of sorts. In contrast, the Grenada communists, Noriega, Milošević , and the Taliban were all defeated, and only after that were their societies rebuilt—and thus Grenada, Panama, Serbia, and Afghanistan now do not belong to the axis of anything. Perhaps for all the debate over how to fight irregular wars in an age of global terrorism, we would do best to recall the realistic, if inelegant, words of the owner of the Oakland Raiders, the infamous Al Davis: 'Just win, baby.'"