A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian Wars. |
Any time the Western way of war can be unleashed on an enemy stupid enough to enter its arena, victory is assured. |
Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq - mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of state-run Arab media and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them. |
If many thousands of illegal aliens marched in their zeal, many more millions of Americans of all different races and backgrounds watched - and seethed. They were struck by the spectacle of illegal alien residents lecturing citizen hosts on what was permissible in their own country. |
It is an odd war, because the side that I think is losing garners all the press. Yet we hear nothing of the other side that is ever so slowly, shrewdly undermining the enemy. |
States are like people. They do not question the awful status quo until some dramatic event overturns the conventional and lax way of thinking. |
The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom - never. |
This bloody past suggests to us that enemies cease hostilities only when they are battered enough to acknowledge that there is no hope in victory - and thus that further resistance means only useless sacrifice. |
To ask brave soldiers to go into the inferno of Afghanistan and Iraq and by virtue of their skill and courage, under the televised scrutiny of a global audience, end the rule of murderers was not easy. Nor was staying on to help the helpless. Yes, the truly frightening alternative was the blustering inaction that we have seen for the past 20 years that led to September 11 and the real quagmire in the Middle East. |
Westernization, coupled with globalization, has created an affluent and leisured elite that now gravitates to universities, the media, bureaucracies, and world organizations, all places where wealth is not created, but analyzed, critiqued, and lavishly spent. |