Winning Wars in the 21st century

When I was in elementary school and in high school, I was always fascinated by American History, our history. I bought the whole “Great Story” style of the text books, a style that even pervaded other historical books and works of fiction in those days. Being a baby boom child, the product of a returning war veteran and a home front warrior, my dad was in the service in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters from December 15, 1941 till January, 1946; my mother, a 15 year old young woman, worked at Wright Patterson Air Base during the war, dissembling the airplane engines that had been salvaged from the wreckage of war. It was natural that war would fascinate me, after all I lived in the greatest country in history, and who had never lost a war.

As children, we would discuss the potential for us to experience war as our parents had, and actually hoped that it would happen. Before, I go further, remember we were a generation who saw the old news reels of the crowds throwing roses at our troops as they liberated one town after another in Europe, and watched the documentary “Victory at Sea,” which set to music the great crusade against darkness our fathers had taken part in WWII. Korea was another story, and really an unfinished one, as we are finding out over 50 years after the cease fire and armistice was agreed to in 1953.

So we immersed ourselves in the glorious stories of the last real fight against darkness, which was not tinged with politics and grey areas. I think that is why the class of ‘46, our fathers and uncles, who fought in that war, had a hard time reacting to the political wars that started with Korea and are still with us. For them a war was to be fought until “victory” was achieved. That was the way in their war, after all. The idea of waging war without victory was unthinkable, and therefore they did not accept the idea, that troops would be sent into harm’s way without a clear idea of the goals, other than to contain the other side or to demonstrate willingness to shed blood for no clear purpose.

So as we went to war, and dreamed of being pelted with roses from a grateful people for being liberated from evil, we were awakened from our dreams being pelted with anything but roses, and told that they did not want us there. Some of the people who doing the talking were our own, and the romantic idea of the just war was crushed in our minds. Now some 40 years later, we are in a war without end again, which I truthfully did not think would happen again. For if you look at the conflicts after Vietnam, they all have one thing in common, shortness of duration and clear goals. Also the opponents were clearly those who we could overwhelm easily and bring the conflict to an end quickly, Grenada, Panama and even the first Gulf War falls into that category.

When the neo-cons, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney, lobbied for a war with Iraq, they assured the people, that it would be of short duration and that we would welcomed as liberators. Well, they were right on the shortness of the “war,” the actual invasion of Iraq and terribly wrong about the reception. There were some incidents of people welcoming our troops, but that ended five minutes after the regime was deposed. Now we are the occupier, represented by that armed patrol cruising through neighborhoods in Baghdad, with scared kids doing sweeps and armed to the teeth, when they should be at home planning for college or working a job.

We are told that right is on our side that we are on the side of freedom and liberation, spreading democracy throughout the world. But in the 21st century, what is right? I am sure that the insurgents feel that right is on their side, for they are attacking a foreign military presence in their land, the same as we would do if the situation was reversed. Just like those who are in Hamas on the West Bank and in Gaza, feel that their struggle against Israel is just, as they see their family members die in missile and artillery attacks by the IDF. Just as the Israelis feel that they are right, in their attacks against Lebanon and the Palestinians, seeing their family members die from suicide attacks and now from rocket attacks. Just as the Hezbollah feel that their fight is just, to punish the Israelis for attacking them. The only problem is that not everyone can be right, all of the time and in every issue.

A talking head on a Sunday TV news show, in trying to justify the continuing attacks on Beirut and the rest of Lebanon, said that the eight people killed in Israel, was the same proportionally as if 500 people were killed in the US. The dissonance in that rationalization of Israel’s response in Lebanon struck me. The death of a human being, is the same no matter where it happens, it is a tragedy. That is the point that we should be making, not that some are worth more and others are worth less somehow, that is how we got in trouble as a human race in the 20th century.

In the 21st century, maybe we as the human race should accept that war is in fact unwinnable, for the abstract reasons we fight them in this century. That it is time to use other means to reach that middle ground, before we waste the lives of our youth and treasure that could be put to better purposes. Just six years ago, we turned the page on the 20th century that was both a time of unparalleled achievement by human kind and a time of unparalleled slaughter by human kind.In the 21st century, winning wars is not fighting them, but dealing with the problems that cause them proactively and unselfishly. Call me a dreamer, but “Imagine.”