Victor Davis Hanson: The Terrible Arithmetic – On Killing an American

VDH ^ | May 28, 2004 | Victor Davis Hanson

[quidnunc]

There is a certain number of Iraqi terrorists that either need to give up, reconsider their militancy, leave the country, or be killed for there to be peace and the emergence of a consensual government. Given the fiery sermons of al Sadr, the cadres of Baathist hold-outs, the horrific assassination of peace-loving Iraqi officials, and the constant bombing of American soldiers, it may well require the latter ultimate fate. We do not know the exact number of enemies that must be eliminated, but only that it will grow exponentially — along with Iraqi and coalition deaths — unless we act decisively.

By the same token, there are a limited number of Americans that we can allow to be killed in Iraq before the American people tire of it all — who nearly three years after watching the bodies freefall from the World Trade Center on 9-11 are forgetting their immediate peril from al Qaedists and the rogue governments that enable such terrorists to operate. At some critical point to come, Americans will no longer see the sacrifice of their precious youth as worth the effort in Iraq to ensure consensual government and our own long-term security — and at that point they will simply say no mas.

Again, we do not know how many fatalities we as a nation can endure, only that in our present postmodern society the number for good or evil is far lower than was true in World War II, Korea, or Vietnam. Our grandfathers rightly accepted that 600 might be lost in a terrible night on Okinawa if such a sacrifice meant freedom from Japanese militarism; we wrongly believe that the present 600 combat dead this past year were either not worth the effort, all preventable, or in no real way connected to the safety of 300 million at home. My rough guess is that once the toll exceeds 1,000 combat dead, the United States will be seriously looking for a rapid exit strategy regardless of the dire circumstances involved.

-snip-

[quidnunc]

VDH

[fire_eye]

I'm just damned sick and tired of this.

Why hasn't the CIA assassinated this piece of schumer and made it look like a hit from one of his co-rodents? It's not like there aren't enough warring factions there that the rug pilots won't even be able to finger out whom to blame...

No, I'm not kidding. I'm dead serious. Assassinate him and make it look like a hit from somebody else. The camel jockeys don't deserve any better. We're sitting around burning up American lives playing Let's Be Politically Correct. The entire panoply of Islamic grovelers over there isn't even worth the life of a Lynndie English, much less that of a real soldier.

[gortklattu]

We're a nation divided while fighting a war with an enemy who has sworn to kill us. Under such circumstances many would have thought this impossible. But, they don't know today's liberals.

Hatred consumes today's liberal. Al Gore's act is typical of their extreme emotional make-up. In doing this, they leave no room for intelligence. Sadly, this is their choice, something our nation has to endure.

[Susannah]

If we had had real-time reporting and television coverage of WWII and Korea, we probably would have lost.

Geez, we only recently learned about Operation Tiger...a military training practice for one invasion of a beach prior to the actual attack. Now we know over 900 soldiers were lost in that training effort.

I can't imagine the American reaction if they had watched The Battle of the Bulge on TV and seen 12,000 soldiers lose their lives.

[Tolik]

  One more from Victor Davis Hanson

Ping!  

[astounded]

Or Iwo Jima or Tarawa or Peleliu or Saipan or Bougainville or Guadalcanal or Okinawa...it's staggering what happened in those places.

I believe we lost fewer Americans in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor than we did in total in the sneak attacks in NYC, DC, and Pennsylvania. And look what we were willing to and did give up just in the Pacific Theater alone after Pearl Harbor was attacked.

It thus boggles my mind that so many in the US seem to have forgotten that in their hand-wringing over really relatively few military casualties. Many of those same people don't seem to understand we are in a war for our very survival as a country.

To paraphrase Admiral "Bull" Halsey: "...the only good Jap (substitute muslim) is a dead Jap (muslim). We intend to make a lot of good Japs (muslims) in the days to come." Our country desperately needs folks with that attitude to speak up. It's serious out there, folks.

[Billthedrill]

I have always been suspicious of the claim that the American people won't tolerate casualties - it's historically false as such. Useless casualties, yes, but one look at Antietam, Chickamauga, the Meusse-Argonne offensive, and Hanson's excellent work on Iwo Jima, will tell anyone the contrary. Vietnam cost us 50,000 people, but it wasn't until the perception became popular that they were for naught, did the antiwar campaigns get any traction.

[AZLiberty]

American does tolerate casualties, at least on the highways. Every two weeks, about as many Americans die in automobile accidents as have been killed so far in Iraq. We don't hear cries to end the carnage on the highways by banning the automobile.

Freedom of mobility is worth a small risk of death. So is freedom from terrorists.

[BartMan1]

ping

[neverdem]

BTTT

[happygrl]

For these hooded merchants of death, killing, not Islam, is their only religion; death is what they wish for us; and death is the only currency they trade in. For those of us in America who value civilization over barbarism and life over death, pay close attention as this terrible arithmetic works itself out in the next few weeks in wretched places like Najef, Karbalah, and Tikrit.

The CPA put a good face on the fall-back of our forces in Fallujah and Najef, but we should have completed the mission, which was to eliminate, ie. KILL every one of the terrorists and Islamicists that were there breathing.