Skip to comments.

Posted on 10/02/2001 9:05:25 AM PDT by MadIvan

The Sinews of Victory
by Mad Ivan

Future generations are going to ask people who are alive today, "Where were you when the war started?" I can say that in the final moments of peace, I was at work, attending to some matter regarding a project I was working on. Then a colleague of mine poked his head into the office.

"Hey, a plane just hit the World Trade Centre."

"Oh no." I thought, thinking it had been a dreadful accident. Other members of the staff and I went down to a meeting room with a television and switched on the BBC. The World Trade Centre was smoking, a gaping wound smashed right into it. A brief replay that the BBC had at that point was misleading - it looked like it had been a Cessna or a Lear jet had crashed, probably a dreadful accident.

Then the second plane hit. As soon as that second plane hit the announcers as everyone else in the room came to the horrible realisation that this had been done on purpose. I thought of my father, who is often on business trips in New York. Fortunately, I remembered he was back in England. My mother, however, was in the New York area. I ran back to my office to call her, with no success. Then my colleague told me the first tower had collapsed and that the Pentagon had been hit. I tried even harder to get through to my mother, but all that happened was the polite voice of the automated recording told me it was "not possible to connect your call".

I went into a chat room and got the news from people who were watching television in America. There were reports about a car bomb outside the State Department. Then came in the report about the plane crash in Pennsylvania. Then the second tower had collapsed, leaving the tallest building in New York in a pile of ruins. A building, I thought to myself, I had visited on a number of occasions, a memory which could not be rebuilt.

Fortunately at the end of the day I found out my mother was all right. I am grateful to the internet for that miracle; she managed to e-mail me and inform me she hadn't been anywhere near harm's way. Nor were any of my extended family in America harmed. Relief then changed to anger towards those who perpetrated this foul deed. For it was a mere whim of fate that meant my father was not in New York, a gift from Providence that my mother was nowhere in harm's way, nor that anyone else I knew had been hurt. This brutal act had indeed killed Britons: the latest estimate suggests that 300 UK citizens were murdered.

It is impossible to be a civilised human being and not be affected by this tragedy. The Prime Minister seemed to choke back emotion when he was first asked for a statement: Mr. Blair, for once, accurately reflected how I felt - he said that terrorism of this kind has to be eradicated. President Bush stated the same. And as I write this, the largest British task force assembled since the Falklands War is on its way to Oman for military exercises, a role which positions them very close to the Americans whose forces are also approaching the Middle East.

However, I would suggest that it is not enough to merely hit Afghanistan and pick up Osama bin Laden, who is likely a guilty party in this atrocity. It is not enough to even attack states which supported this attack. The sinews of victory are going to come from our resolve, as Britons and Americans, and particularly, our resolve to make the terrorists pay such a high price that their will to make war will be broken.

Most wars in the past have had the luxury of convenient battle lines. Generals could tell when they were advancing against Germany or Iraq and conquer objectives drawn on maps. The war against terrorism is often against groups of individuals, hiding in a variety of countries, who do not have a sustained front that needs to be broken. There is no Berlin to take which will signal the end of this conflict. The objective is to smash the will of an elusive enemy to make war.

What makes matters worse from a military perspective is that our military is representative of Britain and America, meaning, it is from nations where civilisation has taken root. Because of our ethics, we fret over every civilian lost, every target missed, every misdirected smart bomb. However, the civilians that were killed on September 11 were largely neither members of the government nor the military; indeed the most influential appears to have been the journalist Barbara Olson. They were genuine innocents, yet this does not appear to have bothered the hijackers in the slightest.

Because of the comforts and moral structure of civilisation, we too often forget that the world has largely been shrouded in darkness, where justice is not determined by the rule of law, but rather, justice is the good of the strong. Our ideals have made us rich and happy in comparison to those parts of the world which remain in eternal night, and they hate us for it. They hate the fact that the poverty of their philosophy has left them in the dark, while civilisation dazzles with its material prosperity and promise of individual freedom. They are thus resolved to bring us down into the dark by any means necessary, and regard us with the same hungry look as a lion views a wildebeest that is too far behind the rest of the herd.

Our resolve will need to come in when we realise what needs to be done to break the will of these predators, these jackals who feed off the slaughter of innocents. We must realise, first, that we cannot hope to win if we refuse to acknowledge the truth that the will of the terrorists needs to be broken. A message needs to be sent to terrorists that if they dare raise their hand to the West, that the blow will be punishing, crushing and disproportionately harsh. To refer to a metaphor used in the movie, "The Untouchables", "for every one he sends to the hospital, you send three of his to the morgue". There is glory in death for the terrorists if they take their enemy in the atrocities they commit. There is no such glory if they are hit by a laser guided bomb which wipes out their entire village as well. The price needs to escalate to the point where those who wish to make war on the West are afraid to speak a word in anger, lest that word bring a terrible punishment.

Second, we must realise that our civilised values are only appropriate for dealing with civilised people. There has been a creeping tendency, particularly on the left, to regard all systems as being equivalent: thus radical socialist feminists can defend the Taliban, a regime which tears the fingernails off of women for the crime of applying nail polish, merely because they have a different way of doing things which they feel is morally equivalent to our own. We do have to remember that we are indeed representing a superior way of life. This does not imply a mission to shove civilisation down the throats of others, but it does imply a vigourous defence of civilisation against those who cannot understand it utilising methods which they can understand.

Third, our leaders need to realise this, and explain the nature of this war to their citizens. The Bush Administration has shown that it is thinking on this level by saying that the struggle will indeed be long and hard, not remedied by a few cruise missiles as Bill Clinton would have suggested. Indeed it will require hitting disparate and often disconnected targets to effect a complete response.

Fourth, those leaders need to remind us what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our civilisation, our way of life, and our individual liberties - luxuries which those in the terrorist outback could not hope to understand or appreciate. Resolve will come from realising that all we hold dear is threatened. Victory will come from maintaining that resolve.

Lest this article close on a too sombre a note, I would turn to some words of inspiration from Winston Churchill, which were said when another form of barbarism threatened to conquer the earth:

This then, my lords and gentlemen, is the message which we send forth today to all states and nations, bound or free, to all the men in all the lands who care for freedom's cause. To our Allies and well-wishers in Europe, to our American friends and helpers drawing ever closer in their might across the ocean, this is the message-lift up your hearts, all will come right. Out of depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind.

So shall we go forward from this terrible and dark time if we only have the courage and the honesty to face that which threatens us.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.