Posted by
Old Bill on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 11:17:52 PM
Few people would dispute that the Allies won WWII, and that the Axis lost. Few would dispute that we Americans won our Revolutionary War for Independence from the British Empire. Few wars, however, result in such total victory for one side or the other. Victory--imposing our will on our enemies, remember--comes in more than one flavor.
Victory can be total--or, logically, it can be partial. It can be partial in any number of ways. We may only be able to inflict part of our will on our enemy, or all of our will on some enemies, less on others. We may be able to eject them from all our territory, or only part of it (think of Kashmir, divided between the Indians and the Pakistanis). We may be able to deter our enemies from launching an armored blitzkrieg intended to kill all of us, but find ourselves unable--for reasons of diplomatic restraint by our allies, or lack of political will in our government due to internal political divisions--to stop these same enemies from launching constant terrorist attacks on our homes and families at a low level of murder--say, a few hundred every year--as is the case with Arab terrorist attacks on Israel.
Victory can be partial not only in such ways, but also in terms of how long it lasts. When the Allies defeated Germany and Austria in The Great War (WWI to us moderns--our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, who fought it, never dreamed there would be another, and so never thought of calling it 'World War One'; they were such naive optimists) only succeeded in imposing their will on their defeated enemies for 21 years; or only 14, if you take the accession to power of the Nazis as the index of failure.
This is of interest not only to historians, but to all of us. After all, the reason we are fighting a war is so that we will not be robbed, enslaved, or killed--remember? This can get to be important, especially if you see it happen to your children. So pay attention--do it for the children, OK?
When we defeat our enemy in a war--a war they started, remember, by killing some of us--we seek to get as long a period of peace, with that particular enemy, as we possibly can. In order to make the sacrifice of those of our countrymen who have been killed and crippled and wounded, and greatly inconvenienced defending us--worthwhile. If we go off to war, and win, and then have to watch as, 20 years later, our sons and nephews go off to fight the same people (and their sons and nephews) AGAIN--we will be really, really po'd with the American fools who led us in the first war, and who, obviously, let the opportunity be lost; the opportunity to really educate these foreign fools so they wouldn't decide to kill us again.
We will be just as po'd if we have to fight these jerks a second time after 12 years.
What the hell are wars for, if not to ensure that we won't be attacked by the same people more than once every--oh, century or so? At the most?
This is why people who think it's a good idea to just clobber somebody, dismantle their army, and then say "Sorry about that" and leave, are usually wrong. (Nothing is always wrong, except losing a war). You might have to do that if, for example, your army was desperatley needed somewhere else to fight an even bigger, worse enemy, and you figured you could afford to ignore the one you had just defeated because they weren't such a huge threat anyway, and seemed to be really, really sorry--like, for instance, the Italians in 1943, after they surrendered and joined us as our allies in the war against the Germans, who we still had to beat. But you can't always count on someone who has just tried to kill you and your whole country being such decent people as the Italians.