| I like Victor Davis Hanson. I think he is entertaining and sometimes educational even though he is something of a Western-chauvinist(those who think I am go read him). However I would like to point out some flaws in his logic.
He seems to believe that the goal of war is to destroy the enemy. It most certainly is not. Sometimes that is the goal-if the enemy is such an obvious threat that one can't afford to let him rule(I.E. The Nazi's). Normally however the object is whatever the object is. There will always be a new enemy and you might need the old one to counter the new.
This is an important point. VDH like many others criticizes fighting for "mere" territory, political gain, etc, and not destroying the opposing army. He says if the opponent doesn't know he is beaten there will always be another war to fight. But there will always be another war to fight anyway so that point goes by the wayside. VDH's point can be turned on it's head. Fighting primarily to destroy is meaningless; there must be some goal which comes first. The same might be said to those who like to criticize eighteenth-century commanders who conquered territory and let their foes escape: what do you think they were fighting for? Of course I am exagerrating a tendency of VDH to make a point but still.
VDH also has a romantic admiration for "citizen-soldiers". Of course , that is "all very well". Citizen-soldiers have aquited themselves well several times. However they tend to do best when national-survival is at stake. We tend to think of human history as a long period of calm interspersed by calamitious wars with a definite end and beginning-like long calms with periodic storms. However if you study history you find that the most common relation is low-level war: raiding, spying, subverting, and making mayhem. It is almost as constat as police work. Citizen-soldiers aren't really built for this sort of thing, after all they have their crops to grow. Using them for border-war is both cruel(for it gives unnecessary duties to people who have other commitments)and inexpedient(for it wears down morale, and uses immproperly trained people for a delicate job). Thus even relatively free states often need profesionals.
Any comments? |
