Is the unexamined war worth fighting?

Lamenting the difference between the war that started for America on December 7, 1941 and the present “war,” Victor Hanson notes:

[I]n those days, peace and reconstruction followed rather than preceded victory. In tough-minded fashion, we offered ample aid to, and imposed democracy on, war-torn nations only after the enemy was utterly defeated and humiliated. Today, to avoid such carnage, we try to help and reform countries before our enemies have been vanquished—putting the cart of aid before the horse of victory.

Ok. But let us remember that a couple of years ago Hanson grandly declared that what we’re fighting for in this war is a “free and tolerant mankind” (for which I called him a “liberal universalist with a gun.”) Now, if our goal in the war is to spread tolerance to all mankind, how do we “utterly defeat and humiliate our enemies”? Doesn’t the goal of disseminating tolerance get in the way of the really ruthless attitude that Hanson says is necessary for victory? Indeed, doesn’t all that stuff about tolerance lead directly to the “sensitive” approach to war-fighting that Hanson and his fellow neocons have endlessly derided? It becomes clear that, notwithstanding the millions of words he has written on the subject, Hanson has still not grasped the fundamental contradiction at the core of this liberal war—a contradiction he embodies.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 07, 2006 06:00 PM | Send