The War Will Go On

In a sense, military historian Victor Davis Hanson has it backwards.  Never mind about the tactical considerations of Iraq vs. Afghanistan, he says.

Depending on how we leave Iraq, this global war against radical Islamic terrorism will either wax or wane. But it will hardly end.

Wrong, Mr. Hanson.  On the contrary, whatever we do in Iraq, the global war of Islamic terrorism against us will go on. 

After all, we don’t give a damn about whether Islam lives or dies.  As far as we are concerned we are the future and the Islamists are a bunch of parallel-cousin-marrying barbarians.

It is the fact that the Islamists won’t live and let live that we are in this war, pace the Noam Chomsky brigade.

But, of course, we are just quibbling.  Hanson is making the point that Iraq is just a battle, a tactical or operational question.  We can win it or lose it. But win or lose in Iraq the war with an enraged Islam will go on.

Most likely, it will take a western city or two damaged by a dirty nuclear bomb before the West gets mad enough to get serious.

The trouble with barabarians is that you don’t know when to take them seriously.  Usually they are just a nuisance.  But sometimes they can take down an empire.  It happened to the Roman Empire, and it happened a few times to the Middle Kingdom, most notably when Genghis Khan and his chaps took over in the 1200s and inspired Coleridge:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea

and so on.

Strategically speaking, the next item on the agenda is what the Democrats will do when they are next in power.

Because that is a very different thing from being in opposition.