Maybe I’m just an old fogy, but it seems to me that the American people are being asked – no, forced – to accustom themselves to some aspects of warfare that, for one reason or another, simply didn’t exist for most of the 20th century.
War, of course, has been around since the dawn of history and has taken many forms. But in the 20th century, it tended to be waged by nations (as distinguished from tribes) and was usually conducted by highly organized and specialized forces in uniform. These were drawn from the populations of the nations involved and were supported by their patriotic juices. Contemporary accounts of the battles that occurred were usually highly colored and favorable to the home team; it was only later, in memoirs written long after the events, that the grim nature of warfare was revealed in all its horror.
That was certainly the case with the first and second world wars. It is often said that the latter was the last really “popular” war the United States participated in. I served in it, and I can testify that, once the Japanese had kicked us into it, there was almost no domestic criticism of the war – including our “war aims,” our military strategy and the like. If there were indeed critics, they were hooted into silence. And the coverage of the war was carefully sanitized. I can hardly recall seeing a single photograph of a dead American soldier on a battlefield.
Some of the recent changes are simply the result of modern technology – the so-called “CNN effect.” The virtually instantaneous transmission of news events makes it possible to cover war’s activities in real time, and that, in turn, makes it impossible to exclude truly horrifying scenes of carnage, including carnage committed against, or – almost as bad – by, Americans. No one, today, has any excuse for not knowing just how terrible war can be.
In addition, fate has decreed that America’s (and indeed civilization’s) great enemy in the early years of the new century shall be the fanatical fringe of the great Muslim world, a world that has simply not yet succeeded in coming to terms with modernity. Yet the new technology, paradoxically, has come to the aid of these fanatics. They are able to move swiftly and secretly around the world, transporting themselves and all kinds of deadly weapons into the hearts of great Western societies. Unable to wage an ordinary war, or win a normal victory, they can cause hideous damage by sacrificing their own lives. They are convinced they can force us to cut and run by acts of barbarism (such as mutilations and beheadings) for which nothing in our experience has prepared us.
Finally, as if these new external problems were not enough, recent generations of college professors, emancipated by modern philosophy from any sense of loyalty to their country, have given rise to a significant minority of college graduates who regard the United States, not as “the last, best hope of earth,” but as the world’s principal malefactor. As a result, every war the United States has participated in, since and including Vietnam, has had to contend with a strident domestic opposition, and we can expect this to be a feature of every American military enterprise for the foreseeable future.
It is necessary to ask whether an open and democratic society like the United States can be expected to withstand all of these new factors in the military equation and play its anticipated part in the world’s affairs. Confronted with fanatical Muslims prepared to lay down their own lives and to conduct guerrilla warfare by the most obscene tactics, without reference to the civilian status or innocence of their American victims, do we have the fortitude to watch all this on television, in real time, while a significant fraction of our intellectual community, supported by demonstrators, is openly attacking our purposes, defaming our political leaders and undermining our national resolve?
Like it or not, we are about to find out.
