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| Brief Wars Rarely Produce Lasting Results, Long Wars Often Do. |
| 2005-12-09 |
| TNR. Reg Req. EFL RTWT. From a Harvard Professor who clearly chokes when he has to say good things about what W has done and who therefore botches why we got into this war, but nonetheless gets to the correct answer through his own circuitous route. What does this history teach us? Three things: First, that Victor Davis Hanson is right--wars often change purposes after they begin. Second, that sometimes the new purpose is vastly better than the one it replaces. Few nations choose up front to sacrifice their sons for the sake of others' freedom. When such sacrifices are made, they usually flow not from design but from accident and error--just as the North's military blunders prolonged the Civil War, and thereby made it a struggle to bring that new birth of freedom to the war-torn land over which the soldiers fought. The third lesson is the most important. Brief wars rarely produce permanent results, but long wars often do. Today our forces and Iraqis are fighting together and, slowly, winning a good and noble war that holds the hope of bringing to millions a measure of freedom they never knew before. And yet today, America seems ready, even eager, to concede defeat and withdraw: a sad twist on the famous George Aiken formula for extricating American soldiers from Vietnam. It sounds bizarre--why would anyone want to throw away the chance of such a great victory, when victory seems within reach? But it isn't bizarre. On the contrary, it has happened before. Again, consider the politics of the Civil War. In 1863 the Northern street--the term didn't exist then, but the concept did--rose, and New York saw the worst rioting in our nation's history. The rioters' cause was ending the draft on which Lincoln's war depended. A year later Lincoln seemed headed for electoral defeat, even as Grant's and Sherman's armies seemed headed for decisive military victories. Victory often seems most elusive to civilians when it is most nearly within soldiers' grasp. And noble causes often do not sound noble to the nation whose sons must fight for them. (Those who do the fighting understand: Lincoln had the overwhelming support of soldiers in the field, and I would bet my next paycheck that today's soldiers overwhelmingly support fighting through to victory in Iraq.) In many American towns and cities, then as now, the cause of freedom for others did not seem a cause worth fighting and dying for. But it is, partly because--as Lincoln saw better than anyone--others' freedom helps to guarantee our own. A world where Southern planters ruled their slaves with the lash was a world where Northerners' rights could never be secure; if birth and privilege and caste reigned supreme in the South, those things would more easily reign elsewhere, closer to Northern homes. Lincoln had it right: Either democracy and freedom would go on to new heights or they might well "perish from the earth." So too today. A world full of Islamic autocrats is a world full of little bin Ladens eager to give their lives to kill Americans. A world full of Islamic democracies gives young Muslim men different outlets for their passions. That obviously means better lives for them. But it also means better and safer lives for us. None of this excuses the bungling and bad management that have plagued the Iraq war. The administration has made some terrible mistakes that have cost precious lives, both among our soldiers and among Iraqi civilians. But bungling and bad management were far more evident in Lincoln's war than they have been in Bush's. Most wars are bungled; battle plans routinely go awry. Sometimes, error gives rise to larger truths; nations can stumble unawares onto great opportunities. So it was in the 1860s. So it is today in the Middle East at least for liberals. I believe W has known what he was doing from day one, as did Lincoln. It was only a question of hwo much truth they could tell the people because they knew the people couldn't handle the truth. . Two-and-a-half years ago, our armed forces set out to fight a small war with a small objective. Today we find ourselves in a larger war with a larger and vastly better purpose. It would be one of history's sadder ironies were we to turn away because that better purpose is not the one we set out to achieve. Either we fight the fight our enemies have chosen until they are defeated or (better still) dead, or millions of Muslim men and women may lose their "last, best hope"--and we may face a mushroom cloud over Manhattan, the work of one of the many Mohammed Attas that Middle Eastern autocracies have bred over the last generation. The choice belongs not to the president alone, but to all of us. Here's hoping we choose as wisely as Lincoln's generation did. Though the author is loathe to admit it, we already chose wisely when we re-elected W. We just have to keep doing so, because as W. said, it's going to be a long war. |
| Posted by:Spomoth Floger7251 |