Portrait Of The Dam Which Keeps Us From 'Going Roman' -- A Dam Which Will Most Probably Eventually Break

Victor Davis Hanson examines the absurd nature of the current war situation. His well-written piece discovers the following six apparent principles:

1. To win these wars, our soldiers must not die or kill.

2. To win these wars, there must be no news of them.

3. To win these wars, a liberal Democrat must wage them.

4. To win these wars, we must win over the Europeans by ensuring they can always earn a profit.

5. To win these wars, we need to outsource the job to those who can fight them with impunity.

6. To win these wars, they should be over in 24 hours — but at all cost no more than 8 weeks.

As a sampler, here is how Hanson establishes points one and two:

To best deal with certain difficulties we’ve encountered in these battles thus far, perhaps the United States should adopt the following set of surreal rules of war.

1. Any death — enemy or friendly, accidental or deliberate, civilian or soldier — favors the terrorists. The Islamists have no claim on morality; Westerners do and show it hourly. So, in a strange way, images of the dead and dying are attributed only to our failing. If ours are killed, it is because those in power were not careful (inadequate body armor, unarmored humvees, etc), most likely due to some supposed conspiracy (Halliburton profiteering, blood for oil, wars for Israel, etc.). When Muslim enemies are killed, whether by intent or accidentally, the whole arsenal of Western postmodern thought comes into play. For the United States to have such power over life and death, the enemy appears to the world as weak, sympathetic, and victimized; we as strong and oppressive. Terrorists are still “constructed” as “the other” and thus are seen as suffering — doctored photos or not — through the grim prism of Western colonialism, racism, and imperialism.

In short, it is not just that Western public opinion won’t tolerate many losses; it won’t tolerate for very long killing the enemy either — unless the belligerents are something akin to the white, Christian Europeans of Milosevic’s Serbia, who, fortunately for NATO war planners in the Balkans, could not seek refuge behind any politically correct paradigm and so were bombed with impunity. Remember, multiculturalism always trumps fascism: the worst homophobe, the intolerant theocrat, and the woman-hating bigot is always sympathetic if he wears some third-world garb, mouths anti-Americanism, and looks most un-European. To win these wars, our soldiers must not die or kill.

2. All media coverage of fighting in the Middle East is ultimately hostile — and for a variety of reasons. Since the 1960s too many reporters have seen their mission as more than disinterested news gathering, but rather as near missionary: they seek to counter the advantages of the Western capitalist power structure by preparing the news in such a way as to show us the victims of profit-making and an affluent elite. Second, most fighting is far from home and dangerous. Trash the U.S. military and you might suffer a bad look at a well-stocked PX as the downside for winning the Pulitzer; trash Hezbollah or Hamas, and you might end up headless on the side of the road. Third, while in a southern Lebanon or the Green Zone, it is always safer to outsource a story and photos to local stringers, whose sympathies are usually with the enemy. A doctored photo that exaggerates Israeli “war crimes” causes a mini-controversy for a day or two back in the States; a doctored photo that exaggerates Hezbollah atrocities wins an RPG in your hotel window. To win these wars, there must be no news of them.

Such a situation is inherently unstable, and I don't expect it to last. If the jihadis manage to pull off something much worse than 9/11 in this country, then I think they'll find that we've simply run completely out of patience and mercy. Somewhere I've read, "To end our conflict with Islam, either they must learn to think and act like us for a couple of generations, or we must learn to think and act like them for a couple of months". Fortunately, when total annihilation of that part of the world becomes thinkable to us, it will be vastly easier to do the many things short of that that will help things immensely. Some ideas: occupy Saudi Arabia and get control of our oil again. Starve the other Islamic oil-producing countries with the resulting low, low prices. Shut down the hatred-preaching mosques in this country. Deport or jail Islamic trouble-makers. Profile the hell out of young Middle Eastern men, instead of hassling grandmas. Prosecute sedition and treason to the full extent of the law. Judiciously lay waste to certain terrorist-infested areas. And other common sense stuff.

What eventually happens is far more up to the jihadis then it is up to us. Despite all of the nonsense we're putting up with now, I don't honestly expect us to ultimately "go gentle into that good night". There will eventually be a winner. And it won't be Islam.