There's a line of thinking out there that says that if you kill too many of your enemies, and especially if you cause civilian deaths, you'll only create more enemies. Thus excessive force (and maybe any force at all) is counter productive in war. It makes sense, right?
But does history actually show this? The Allied armies in World War 2 killed millions of Germans and Japanese yet both of those countries became close allies in the years just after the war. In fact most of our allies are countries that we've gone to war with in the past, including Great Britain, Canada, Mexico, the Confederacy, Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan and now even Russia. Conventional wisdom says that each of these countries should have turned against us for generations to come, and yet they didn't.
So why didn't Sherman's Burning of Atlanta create a perpetual war with Southerners? Why didn't the firebombing of Dresden create a permanent anti-American Germany. These disproportionate acts of violence supposedly create more problems but instead they seem to have the opposite effect. We were so disproportionate in our response to Pearl Harbor that Japan became a nation of pacifists for the next half century.
I wonder if a severe penalty for war might not actually be a deterrent, creating a bad taste for conflict. In our war on terrorism, we're constantly warned not to act too harshly for fear of creating the next generation of terrorists. I don't think so. Israel has tried to get along with terrorists and where has that gotten them? Maybe if the backlash was more severe, there might be an end in sight.
You never want to advocate more killing or more violence, but passivity and appeasement may only draw out the violence, perhaps without end.
2 comments:
And where has restraint gotten us with North Korea, Vietnam, Muslim extremists?
Restraint with North Korea has prevented a nuclear exchange and invasion of South Korea; in Vietnam restraint was shown only in regards to China and China's direct interests...restraint toward China again prevented a nuclear exchange...and lost the fight for us (BTW we had no good reason for that "police action" and shouldn't have been in that particular fight), restraint toward Muslim extremists is the law and is afforded them just as it is afforded Christian extremists...unless and until they become terrorists, in which case, we hunt them down and kill them...
BTW your argument is largely without merit because you are comparing actions taken against nations with our current action being taken against individuals loyal to a cause...individuals who are so devoted to that cause that they would kill themselves along with as many "infidels" as possible. These people are not under the governing jurisdiction of a country and will not be reigned in by a national directive. They are not rational and will not behave rationally under pressure. They are not German, Japanese, or Russian and will not behave as if they were. They are religious extremists and they will not sacrifice their ideals for a more tollarable life. And action without careful thought is exactly the recipe to cook up more of them.
Further we now find ourselves in the unique position of being the lone superpower, as such we are easy to envy...easy to hate. How we present ourselves to the world is more important now that it ever has been...how can we ask others to show restraint if we won't...
Having said all this; I do support the war...but sometimes discretion really is the better part of valor.
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