David Rivkin has an article in the latest issue of National Review called “No Substitute for Victory.” To my knowledge, this article is not available online.
I hope to comment on Rivkin’s piece later in the week, but for now I’ll just quote his final paragraph:
Adolf Hitler had nothing to do with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan and Germany were not even coordinating their war strategies against a common enemy, the Soviet Union. Indeed, Japan rather foolishly chose not to engage Russia in the winter of 1941, when the Germans were pressing it hard to do so, and this allowed Stalin to pull Soviet Forces from the Far East and rush them to the gates of Moscow.
Our World War II foes were animated by different and even inconsistent ideologies. Yet no serious military historian would question that combat with Nazi Germany in the European and African theatres was a part of a broader epochal struggle against the Axis Powers.
Likewise the streets of Baghdad, the dusty roads of the Sunni Triangle, the back alleys of Kabul, and the mountains of Pashawar are all theatres in the global struggle against the Islamists. The surest way to hand them victory is to lose sight of this reality.
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