Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Give War a Chance
The big problem in conflicts today is the unwillingness to let anyone lose. If the Sunnis lost in Iraq, really lost, so that they could no longer tell themselves that they are doing everyone a favor by showing up to put their two cents in, they might behave a lot better. If the Germans had really lost in WWI, i.e., had seen their army destroyed, then the inter-war years would not have been dominated by conspiracy theories about who was responsible for the sell-out. If the Palestinians were given a taste the no-holds bared war they are waging against Israel would they go on? Would their political culture be an endless argument about finding the ‘collaborators’? Anger is pain plus the idea that you are being treated unjustly. We avoid winning completely to avoid pain but the cost is reinforcing the argument that they are being treated unjustly. WWII ended in our becoming friends with our enemies precisely because we beat them in a way that discredited the previous regime completely. If WWII had ended with a negotiated settlement with us making a lot of concessions on the legitimate pre-war grievances of Japan and German wouldn’t it have increased the leverage of those arguing that the war and the consequent pain was the fault of the other side? Like P. J. O’Rouke says, give war a chance.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
a strange idea - "win the war completely"...Hmm, what does it mean - kill every German in 1945 or 1918? seems very stalinist view to me: "net cheloveka, net problema" (no person - no problem)
why is this efficient? wars end when the losing side is convinced that they are losing - i.e. they negotiate peace in the best terms they can get - I am wondering how the winning side president or whoever will justify a "complete victory" - i.e. spending even more money killing and destroying more "enemies" rather than get a reparation payment and bring the army back home.
maybe your idea was valid in the days of tribal war but for some reason wars evolved to end the way they do now - if it happened it must have been for a good reason.
Well, I think you have hit it with "when the losing side is convinced that it is losing." We have ended a number of recent wars when the leadership but not the population was convinced that it was losing. This is what happened in WWI, The Arab-Israeli conflicts and the first Gulf war. These wars did not end in stable peace becuase the governments of those countries that started the war were left in place. The regimes that bring about the defeats are left in tact to blame their defeats on internal traitors and outside machinations (ususally Jews). Taking a reparation payment means becoming complicit with the regime that is paying you and allowing the population of the country to blame you for their problems.
As for the Stalinist, well, the idea is to replace the regime that is the problem. If you replace the regime with a regime that is worse then obviously the argument does not apply. The idea of defeating and replacing the Nazi regime (rather than taking a payoff and going home--sounded out any of your Jewish freinds on that one?) was right. Replacing it with a democracy was right. Replacing it with a Communist regime wasn't.
On to the Chechnia example. Are the Russians fighting the Chechens in retaliation for terrorism? My impression was that the terrorism against Russians came after the invasion. More importantly, is it true that the Russians have had a worse problem with terrorism? Historically the middle eastern regimes almost never sanctioned terrorism against Russia. One time a Russian ambassador was kidnapped--the russians wrote the ambassador off and sent back the mutilated bodies of the kidnappers--no more kidnapping.
In Faluja we let the terrorists get away. If we had attacked full on the way we would have in WWII perhaps we could have spared the Iraqis the much of the present terror campaign that those we allowed to escape are waging.
Finally, "if it happened it must have been for a good reason." Are you serious?
Post a Comment