Category Archives: War Commentary

War Commentary

Our Friends The Russians

No problems with Damascus or Teheran, according to them:

Hezbollah and Hamas should be integrated into peaceful politics, and third countries should not be blamed for the current Middle East crisis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

“We need to find a way for Hamas and Hezbollah to achieve their largely legitimate political goals through participation in political life … and not through force,” Lavrov told the Echo Moscow radio station Wednesday, adding that less radical parts of Hezbollah and Hamas could return to peaceful politics.

So, the destruction of Israel and eventual worldwide domination of Islam is a “largely legitimate political goal”?

This is looking more and more like a world war every day.

[Via Andy McCarthy]

And what a weekend to be immersing myself in a space conference.

As one wag once said about the Balkans, the Middle East seems to be producing a little more history than it can locally consume.

War Commentary

No New Thing Under The Sun

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Mark Steyn discusses the shocking truth–that George Bush didn’t invent war:

Lawrence Keeley calculates that 87 per cent of primitive societies were at war more than once per year, and some 65 per cent of them were fighting continuously. “Had the same casualty rate been suffered by the population of the twentieth century,” writes Wade, “its war deaths would have totaled two billion people.” Two billion! In other words, we’re the aberration: after 50,000 years of continuous human slaughter, you, me, Bush, Cheney, Blair, Harper, Rummy, Condi, we’re the nancy-boy peacenik crowd. “The common impression that primitive peoples, by comparison, were peaceful and their occasional fighting of no serious consequence is incorrect. Warfare between pre-state societies was incessant, merciless, and conducted with the general purpose, often achieved, of annihilating the opponent.”

…One swallow doesn’t make a summer, of course, but I wonder sometimes if we’re not heading toward a long night of re-primitivization. In his shrewd book Civilization And Its Enemies, Lee Harris writes:

“Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe. . . . That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary.”

For many, it still apparently is.

War Commentary

He Forgot One

I agree that we’re in a new world war (and the third in a row that is a fundamental clash of ideologies), but I wish that Newt would stop calling it World War III. It’s World War IV. World War III was the Cold War. And unfortunately, this one may last almost as long.

[Update]

I should note this (a couple years old, and quite long) essay by Norman Podhoretz on this issue.

[Late morning update]

If we’re in a long world war, then it makes no sense to talk about the “war” in Iraq. It was only a battle, as was Afghanistan, as Larry Schweikart points out:

The supposed value of history is that it allows one to apply a long-term lens perspective to current events. That, however, seems to be sadly missing in the case of the War on Terror, and, especially, Iraq. Let me say from the get-go that the Bush Administration erred badly in allowing the struggle in Iraq to be labeled a “war.” It is a battle, part of the larger War on Terror. It is no more a “war” than Sicily or North Africa were “wars.” But Bush fell into the Left’s trap and allowed it to be called a “war,” and as such it has been separated from the “War on Terror,” and the “War in Afghanistan,” itself a battle.

As historians (objective ones, that is) look back 30 years from now, and write the history of this war, they will find the battle of Iraq essentially was over after November 2004. I do not say that because Bush won reelection–that was critical, but so was the formation of the Iraqi government at that time–but because those two events then allowed a military victory at Fallujah, which was the tipping point of this battle (or, if you prefer, “war”). At Fallujah, more than 2000 terrorists were killed and the real al-Qaeda back of the so-called “insurgency” broken. Since then, Zarqawi was scrambling, as did the Japanese after Okinawa, to re-stock his ranks of suicide bombers. They were both unsuccessful. Last month, Zarqawi was killed, replicating the shooting down of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s plane in 1943. Even then, the war in the Pacific was not over–and the bloodiest battles had not been fought–but again, the outcome was further cemented.

And he’s optimistic that we’re going to ultimately win. I hope he’s right.

War Commentary

The Other Lone Star State

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Don’t mess with Knesset…

…we have had the Yom Kippur War, the Attrition War, the Lebanon War, two intifadas and endless terror. Israel has not only survived, but has become stronger. It is a vibrant and prospering democracy, with robust economic growth over the last five years, the highest number of books published per capita in the world, and second place in the world in the publication of articles in scientific journals.

The Arabs, in the meantime, with all their aggression, have only brought on their peoples misery and poverty. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan tower above this self-destructiveness as leaders who really served the best interests of their people by making peace with Israel.

Of course, that’s just a necessary, not a sufficient condition, as we’ve seen by the dismal state of affairs in both countries, but particularly Egypt.

[Credit for slogan and flag to “Dutchgirl” (who’s really a Dane–no shock there)–scroll down to the sixth post]