Thursday - April 29, 2004
War, Morality, and Victory
Quagmire. Another Viet Nam. There are a lot of
different ways of portraying our war in Iraq. The traitors, our enemies, the
squeamish, and the just plain confused like to use these and other
descriptions.But are they correct?
With the continuing uprising in Fallujah, the usual suspects are cringing and
whimpering that we might actually hurt someone and make people mad at us. I
find these people morally
despicable.There is only one morally
correct way to wage war, and that is total war. There is only one sure way to
avoid charges of brutality and that is to
win.
If one were to compare anything to the Viet Nam
War, the comparison is this: By forgetting that the purpose of a war is to win,
the people in charge of waging that war stopped taking all possible measures to
make sure it was won. Bombing North Viet Nam was mostly off limits. Invading
it was completely out of bounds. The most basic principle of war is that
victory necessarily requires that you walk among your defeated enemy and control
his actions. We lacked the political will to take that action and thus we lost
the war.
All the hand wringing and
accusations about how the war was conducted are a result of losing the war, and
the anti-war party only gained strength as more and more people realized that we
weren't winning. After we ignominiously pulled out of Indo China and left our
South Viet Namese allies to a fate of torture, oppression, and re-education, we
became easy targets of contempt and
disdain.
But if we had had the
political will to unleash our military, regardless of what else may have
happened, we would never have gained a reputation for cutting and running when
times get tough.
Likewise, we are
reaching a critical point in the war in Iraq. There are two main courses of
action to choose from: Either we continue this farce of "negotiating" or we
destroy our enemy immediately and finally. The usual suspects are starting to
cry out that we are being too brutal and there is only one way to silence them:
With victory.
If we win, and win
decisively, no one will question how we won so long as we remain within the
letter and spirit of international law. It may sound terrible to bomb a mosque,
but if the enemy are firing from one, it becomes a legitimate target. If we
lose the war, all our enemies, both foreign and domestic, will harp ad nauseum
about our alleged excesses. If we win the war, it all becomes a moot
point.
Now is not the time to lose
sight of our objectives. Now is not the time to grow soft. Now is the time for
ruthlessness and the destruction of Al-Duri and the others that are organizing
this revolt. Once he is dead and his army destroyed, there will be no one to
defend him. Our enemy only understands a boot on his neck.
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