In War: Resolution

by Victor Davis Hanson - February 7th, 2008 - The Claremont Institute

Preoccupied with the daily news from Baghdad, we seem to think our generation is unique in experiencing the heartbreak of an error-plagued war. We forget that victory in every war goes to the side that commits fewer mistakes—and learns more from them in less time—not to the side that makes no mistakes. A perfect military in a flawless war never existed—though after Grenada and the air war over the Balkans we apparently thought otherwise. Rather than sink into unending recrimination over Iraq, we should reflect about comparable blunders in America's past wars and how they were corrected. Without such historical knowledge we are condemned to remain shrill captives of the present.

This is a really long complicated article that everyone should read. Hanson is a master historian about war and its implications. It is an amazing litany of errors. It explains how many errors were not wrong or mistakes when evaluated objectively but simply the predictable result of the fast changing world of war. No one who wants to have an opinion about our current circumstances should not be able to deal with the history portrayed in this article.