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Posted on 10/23/2001 8:09:13 PM PDT by krogers58

If This Be War

A time for choosing.
By Victor Davis Hanson
October 23, 2001 8:35 a.m.

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

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