In War: Resolution
Regular readers of Power Line may recall that I have occasionally declared the Claremont Review of Books to be my favorite magazine. Our friends at the CRB have just put the new (Winter) issue to bed and we've been afforded the privilege of previewing three pieces from the new issue this week.
The entire issue is now available to subscribers online as soon as it's published. Subscribers can access every article individually or download the entire issue (artwork included) in PDF. If you're not already a subscriber, this is another reason to sign up. Subscribe here.
The CRB has been one of the most persistent critics of the Bush administration's conduct of the war from the right. In the Fall issue, for example, Angelo Codevilla deliberated on "the disaster of Iraq" and sought "to measure the occupation of Iraq against the standards of statecraft."
Now that President Bush has found his Grant, however, the CRB has commissioned Victor Davis Hanson to set our blunders in Iraq in historical context. In his superb essay, Hanson observes the waning of the ability of the American public to cope with the errors that are inevitable in war. Hanson is by no means uncritical of our conduct in Iraq. Indeed, he compiles an impressive list of mysteries and errors. But he notes that we have until relatively recently in American history chosen to learn from our errors in war rather than to accept defeat.
In his conclusion, Hanson offers a recommendation and invokes the counsel of the statesman of freedom who thought about issues of war and peace all his long life:
What can be done about our impatience, historical amnesia, and utopian demands for perfection? American statesmen need to provide constant explanations to a public not well versed in history—not mere assertions—of what misfortunes to expect when they take the nation to war. The more a president evokes history’s tragic lessons, the better, reminding the public that our forefathers usually endured and overcame far worse. Americans should be told at the start of every conflict that the generals who begin the fighting may not finish it; that what is reported in the first 24 hours may not be true after a week’s retrospection, and that the alternative to the bad choice is rarely the good one, but usually only the far worse. They should be apprised that our morale is as important as our material advantages—and that our will power is predicated on inevitable mistakes being learned from and rectified far more competently and quickly than the enemy will learn from his.The appropriately Churchillian title of Hanson's essay is "In War: Resolution."Only that way can we reestablish our national wartime objective as victory, a goal that brings with it the acceptance of tragic errors as well as appreciation of heroic and brilliant conduct. The Iraq war and the larger struggle against the anti-American jihadists can still be won—and won with a resulting positive assessment of our overall efforts by future historians who will be far less harsh on us than we are now on ourselves. Yet if as a nation we instead believe that we cannot abide error, or that we cannot win due to necessary military, moral, humanitarian, financial, or geopolitical constraints, then we should not ask our young soldiers to continue to try. As in Vietnam where we wallowed in rather than learned from our shortcomings, we should simply accept defeat and with it the ensuing humiliating consequences. But it would be far preferable for Americans undertaking a war to remember these words from Churchill, in his 1930 memoir: “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.”
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