Victor Davis Hanson: Is the Western Way of War Dead? Not yet, but it may soon be irrelevant

It is now becoming trite to write of the American military “failure” in Iraq. But recently this purported setback has been lumped together with the Israeli problems in southern Lebanon to suggest an end to the long dominance of the Western Way of War — an approach to warfare that has usually allowed Western soldiers to do what they wish abroad, from Alexander at the Indus to the Europeans in the 20^th century.

Supposedly the Islamists have not only evolved beyond the old, failed Arab paradigm of feebly copying Western conventional practice (remember the 1967 Six-Day War or Saddam’s disaster in 1991), but also have mastered a novel sort of jihad terrorism that, within the confines of urban fighting inside the Middle East, has nullified traditional Western advantage — and for good.

It is certainly wise to acknowledge the military and political success of jihadists, whether in the Hindu Kush, the Sunni Triangle, or southern Lebanon, in making life very difficult for relatively small numbers of soldiers in Western militaries. Recently in NR, I reviewed reasons why we should indeed be worried about the terrorists’ new adaptations.

In a Middle East awash in petrodollars, militias like Hezbollah can purchase off-the-shelf night-vision goggles, anti-tank weapons, and communications equipment that near parity with those of the Israel Defense Force. Jihadists in Iraq may not be able to make explosives, but they can easily buy them, adapt them into improvised explosive devices, and then blow up multimillion-dollar Abrams vehicles, along with their professional crews.

This is especially true when Western-generated expertise in munitions is freely available over the Internet or readily learned from study abroad in Western universities. Give a jihadist a sophisticated Russian anti-tank projectile or a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile, along with a few hours of instruction, and he can destroy multimillion-dollar machines and their crews, each of whom has a million-dollar education.

Such asymmetry works also to redefine losses. When the underdog is defeated, but not crushed, victory has a way of being redefined as a setback. We saw that anomaly in Lebanon, where the Israelis killed ten Hezbollah militants for every IDF soldier lost — and were promptly pronounced the losers. Since these postmodern wars usually take place in the home landscape of terrorists and jihadists, it is not easy to ask Western soldiers to give up the good life to fight against enemies who have proclaimed — whether out of religious zeal or from the misery of living in a squalid Ramallah or Baghdad— to love death more than life. It apparently does little good to remember that our generation’s cumulative 2,500 fatalities during combat operations in Iraq amounted to about a week’s losses in our victorious grandfathers’ hard-won victories at the Bulge or in Okinawa.

The West itself is also divided by worries about oil, terrorism, and commercial entanglements with the Middle East. At the United Nations, a France or Russia is as likely to oppose as support America. Europeans willingly sell Iranians the sophisticated machine tools necessary for nuclear fabrication. The European Union takes an odd psychological delight in seeing, and often seeks to profit from, American tactical reversals in the Middle East — as long as they do not impair the overall shared Western strategic advantage.

In an era of global communications, the fact that al Jazeera looks more or less like a splashy Western media outlet gives an impression of credibility and cloaks its propaganda. But more importantly still, 30 years of institutionalized moral equivalence, multiculturalism, utopian pacifism, and cultural relativism in the West are felt even on the distant battlefield. While we are no longer surprised that an ex-president like Jimmy Carter can’t tell the difference between a democracy that is attacked and a kidnapping, missile-shooting terrorist cadre that starts a war, such constant criticism finally does erode our own confidence and emboldens the enemy. Once-noble institutions like Reuters can no longer be trusted to send out photos that are not doctored, or even to report fairly events on the ground — and that too ultimately filters down to affect the very manner in which we make war.

So this anti-Western bias among elites inside the West has given the terrorists enormous advantages in this conflict. If one doubts the sophistication of al Qaeda in echoing Western self-loathing, examine the recent communiqué in which Adam Gadahn condemns Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson, while praising Seymour Hersh, Robert Fisk, and George Galloway. Not long ago Osama bin Laden tried to interject himself into the 2004 elections by hinting that each state will have to accept the consequences of its vote. Earlier he had praised William Blum’s savage take on America, Rogue State.

Of course, there are some reasons to worry when a nation of formidable military strength is unable to crush quickly an insurrection in the Sunni Triangle. But to admit this is a long way away from suggesting that a new successful Islamic way of war — born in Afghanistan and refined in Iraq and Lebanon — has ended Western military dominance.

First, it is not clear that the West, for all its hysteria, has actually lost anything. We removed a Middle Eastern fascist in three weeks, and then in Iraq birthed three successful elections in the heart of the ancient caliphate — following the even more unlikely scenario of doing the same in Afghanistan. Both countries are the only places in the Middle East where soldiers fight terrorists on behalf of legitimately elected governments.

What looks like “quagmire” now may soon, in retrospect, and in later acknowledgment of the ambition of the undertaking, seem both noble and successful. Such an historical assessment is also likely when we consider that the U.S. military has killed thousands of terrorists abroad, and has severely disrupted al Qaeda — while we have suffered no repeat of September 11 here at home.

In June 1940 the world wrote off liberal democracies as unable to marshal the will or competence to stand up to Blitzkrieg; yet, by June 1945 the Wehrmacht was symbolic of an entire failed way of fascist war. Ditto the cycle of awe turned embarrassment that accompanied the Red Army between 1945 and 1979. Nothing is static in military evolution — other than the larger cultural underpinnings that enhance or erode military efficacy.

Second, there are a variety of constraints on American power, but most are not military. In an ethical sense, Western publics object not merely to suffering losses, but increasingly to inflicting them on the enemy as well.

But over the long duration of history, these are cyclical and often transitory phenomena. It is not etched in stone that oil will always be the world’s fuel or that its price will never return to $30 a barrel. Take such profits and strategic importance away from the Middle East, and much of its weaponry, and jihadist zeal, will disappear. And if there is another attack of the caliber of 9/11, Western moral restraint on massive retribution against sponsor states will vanish.

Israel may well have been confused by mobile Katyushas and underground Hezbollah bunkers; but should Syria or Hezbollah send a missile laden with WMD at Tel Aviv, the jihadists and their patrons will quickly learn that there is no defense against an Israeli Western-style response.

Third, it is wiser to look at larger cultural, political, and economic paradigms, of which military prowess, whether conventional or terrorist, is merely a reflection. After its war with Lebanon, Israel, in typically Western fashion, immediately underwent soul-searching to learn from past errors, while Hezbollah chest-thumped over its constructed victory. Already the United States, under the generalship of George Casey, has radically altered tactics, operations, and munitions in Iraq, and, in a constant cycle of challenge and response, will adjust more quickly than its adversaries for the next theater of battle. By early 1944 the Japanese had perfected island defense to such a degree that later, on Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, American firepower was nullified and U.S. Marines were forced to fight a slow, costly, and extremely unwelcome type of war. But that is precisely what they adapted to — and were prepared for, if need be, in Japan.

Fourth, the specter of American military paralysis in the Middle East is often raised as an argument to turn exclusively to diplomacy and politics. The subtext is that a bullying America, by sending its military into the Middle East, has arrogantly and foolishly stuck its finger into a buzz saw.

But that claim is as silly as it is specious. We have tried diplomacy, politics, appeasement, and criminal justice remedies, from the Iranian hostage crisis to the USS Cole — and we earned the logical result for our forbearance on September 11. Indeed, take away 9/11, and a reluctant America would not be in either Afghanistan or Iraq. And calls to talk with Iran or Syria or al Qaeda are not novel — ask Warren Christopher, who sat for hours on Mr. Assad’s Damascus tarmac — but just a rehash of nearly three-decades of failed Middle East diplomacy, as well as an illustration of the current election-year hysteria over a policy that has prevented dozens of planned attacks here at home, and removed two odious regimes abroad.

We may indeed witness eventually the end of the primacy of the Western way of war. Yet that demotion will not be due to the Islamic way of war, but rather to the specter of a thermonuclear exchange with paradise-loving enemies, immune to notions of deterrence — an awful situation in which conventional Western military advantage is reduced to nothing.

That scenario is one reason why we are fighting in such unsavory places to dismantle al Qaeda, as well as to isolate, or change, the jihadists’ patron rogue regimes that are so desperate for such weapons. The real problem is not that the Islamists have crafted a new way of warfare, but that we could lose this war at home without being defeated by the enemy on the battlefield.

For the West to win, I’m convinced we’re going to have to take asymmetric warfare to the enemy’s doorstep. The West needs to replace the bankrupt fascist ideology of our enemies with faith in liberty and the rule of law, at the community level. This is not a luxury as some suggest. If the West cannot operate as allies of communities across the ME then we’ll need intermediary allies that can. Every other plan will only delay and effectively exacerbate the core conflict. The longer the West waits – the more blood this conflict will demand. VDH is right. This is not a new kind of war. It's just a kind we haven't seen in a while. This kind of combat requires we see the whites of their eyes.

Thanks for the PING. Great Post!

You asked:

How is the media able to get away with stepping on the vast majority of the American citizens to put themselves out front as the voice of the people?

Because the media represents to a large extent the views of the ruling class in business and politics, so it is both persuasive and intimidating. It is persuasive because the media shares the same bad understanding of politics that they do (and flatters those leaders who shares the 'consensus' left-wing view), while the media is able to initimidate members of ruling class by besmirching their reputations and thereby socially isolating them from their peers (the real source of their power, not us).

And you thought a Manahttan or DC dinner party was just a dinner party? It's where the ruling class actually rules by forming each others opinions and deciding who is trustworthy or not. Getting called a promoter of torture or a right 'wingnut' by the media will put a real crimp in the social networking by which you maintain and spread your power and wealth.

A republic is fundamentally not a democracy because the ruling class rules by a kind of internal dialogue that is only influenced by the election process, while the election process is often completely determined by the internal dialogue (reflected by the media) of the ruling class.

And if there is another attack of the caliber of 9/11, Western moral restraint on massive retribution against sponsor states will vanish.

How true.

Although after the massive retribution occurs and the West is saved again, the Left will crawl out from under their beds and begin the breast-beating all over again.

They will never show gratitude to the "rough men" who keep them safe; it makes their own cowardice stand in high relief.

"...VDH is right. This is not a new kind of war. It's just a kind we haven't seen in a while. This kind of combat requires we see the whites of their eyes."

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Posted by Tolik for your consideration...

More of V.D.H.'s workmanlike brilliance and clarity.

IMHO, we in the United States need four main things to win out - in spite of the unrelentingly subversive and deceptive leftist/Jihadist Axis - and those "things" {in no particular order} are:

1) The United Kingdom

2) Australia

3) Israel

4) Sheer, gritty willpower.

Of course we'd also like Poland, Ukraine, and others whose doughty bravery we have come to respect, to remain among those we number as friends and allies...

But I will take the abovementioned and Western technology, flexibility, adaptability, and ingenuity onto the battlefield against the forces of hell itself...

Come to think of it, that is pretty close to describing what and whom we are actually facing down...

After all, alla-uzza IS SATAN...and the jihadists are his followers.

This is not the literal, Biblical Armageddon which we are currently staring down...

...But I say it is a definite "tune-up", a foreshadowing of the positions and alliances which will be in place when the time comes to take to the plains of Megiddo.

A.A.C.

"The Final Crusade has commenced - bow your knees and confess with your tongue that Y*HW*H - not alla - is G_d, then go Ye into battle!"

As I read history I find much in the Paris centered story of Charles Martel's pivotal defeat of Infidel invaders at Tours unsatisfactory.

The Battle of Toulouse in 721 was seen by contemporary Moslem and by modern Western historians as of much greater significance in checking the western advance of the Moslems than the Battle at Poitiers. Tours in 731 indeed stopped Abd-al-Raman but Rahman's was a plundering expedition in force and not the crushing defeat the infidels suffered at Toulouse.

Anyway, I like the Aquitanian version of the story!

France will rise again if God so wills. The intellectual and moral poisons of the past can be vomited forth. J-J Rousseau was a monster.

Words of wisdom. V.D.H. never sugarcoats the truth. Fox ran an interview with a woman reporter in Iran, who spoke to men and women at a mosque re Iran's nuclear ambitions. To a man (and woman), they said they trusted their leader, that Iran would never make a bomb...it's just for energy. But they also vowed that they need access to nukes as a counterbalance to Israel. When the reporter said, well then you're saying you want the bomb, they answered that they thought they deserved the right to make one if needed. This was at a mosque after prayers, and who knows if they thought their fearless leader was listening. Not good news, however.

Truman, by using the A-bomb, made the Japs feel they were defeated; had we invaded the homeland the "old fashioned way", our complete victory wouldn't have been as emotionally felt by the population.
This gut-wrenching event thus gave way for a new outlook for a more civilized, democratic-type society. The prior militarism in Japan was readily seen as self-destructive.

Although after the massive retribution occurs and the West is saved again, the Left will crawl out from under their beds and begin the breast-beating all over again.

They will never show gratitude to the "rough men" who keep them safe; it makes their own cowardice stand in high relief.

Indeed.

John Stewart Mill said it best:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

The jihadi way of war involves hiding among a sympathetic populace between operations, coming out to attack, and dashing back

While they are hiding among their sympathizers, finding them is like looking for a needle in a haystack. This works only up to the point where the other side is fed up enough to just torch the haystack

There is already a plurality in France that understands the 'multi-cultural' policies of the left combined with the de facto segragation of the Muslim communities have left France both intellectually and morally incapable of integrating the Muslims.

Until there is a revival of French pride (without chauvinism and without the disgusting resurgence of anti-Semitism now associated wih the left), they cannot integrate the Muslims: after all, how can you demand that they become moral and intellectual jellyfish?

Pierre Manent, Finkelkraut, Ferry and other French 'liberals' (in the old sense) must press the intellectual argument and Sarkozy must press the political case. The current struggle over the portrayal of France's colonies in the French curriculum is a test case: can they strip the left of the power of discredting everything about France and strip the Muslims of their claim of perpetual victimhood, or not?

One of the best kept secrets of colonialism is that large portions of the subject populations were awed by the culture, commerce, and military prowess of the Europeans and sought-- even after independence, and particularly in the Arab world-- to rationalize their societies along Western lines. But to bring this up is to discard cultural relativism and to make the argument that not everything about colonialism was bad, arguments that place the treason of the left (not simply against France but against civilization itself) in full view. So they will fight tooth and nail to prevent any reconsideration of the false hagiography of barbarian otherness and Soviet despotism lest their own moral and political collusion with treason be exposed.

You have interesting ideas which fit reality quite well. We are indeed witnessing treason. Attempting to make an historical metaphor for our current situation, as I did earlier with "J-J Rousseau", is difficult.

Perhaps one may mention Jünger's "Auf Den Marmorklippen"? His story of reality, that is, of treason, vulgarity, popular nihilism and licentiousness slipped right by the censors in 1940. I think that Jünger's story is more valid today than it was when written.

Juenger is an interesting case. I read that he wrote a short book in the '30s that clearly mocked the Nazis. Himmler told Hitler that they should arrest Juenger, but as Hitler regarded Juenger as a fellow front-line veteran from WWI, he ordered the Gestapo to leave Jeunger alone.

Juenger served as an officer in Paris during WWII, where he was given the melancholy duty of shooting German deserters, most of whom deserted for reasons of love. I recall reading his account of an Allied bombing of Paris' railway junctions, which he watched while drinking wine and and eating strawberries from the rooftop of a hotel.

He lost his only child fighting in the battle of the Huertgen Forest in early 1945. When he received the telegram, he had one laconic entry in his diary, "At last little Ernst has surpassed his father."

The real oddity was that his early 20th century fascination with the deracination and deleterious 'mixing' of European 'racial' types remained part of his writings into the 1990's.

Those points still merit consideration, not on 'racial' grounds but on cultural ones today: if you are going to have a society that successfully integrates masses of immigrants, you had better have a pretty strong sense of civic religion, as France once had and the US still has to some extent. And I think that is very hard to maintain unless it is tied to a sense of divine providence, so that the more atheistic a society becomes and the more enmeshed in petty hedonism, the more the social and political order breaks down.

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