Letter to Steyn offers cold comfort to the poor blighters who cast their lot with us
Letter of the Week
AMERICAN ATTITUDES TO WARFARE
I'm a great admirer of your columns and wish you continued success.
I wanted to give you a bit of an idea. I teach history at a community college in New Jersey and part of my lecture regarding US History is an explanation of what I consider to be the American reaction to warfare. It is a synergy of two principles. The first is the "1/3 Rule" as explained by John Adams during the Revolutionary War. They second is my rule on American war spirit, which I call the "Two Year Rule". How they work is thus:
John Adams once said that only about 1/3 of the American people were for the Revolution, 1/3 were neutral and 1/3 were against it.
This split is still the functioning system of the American electorate today. About 1/3 are hard core Democrat, 1/3 are hard core Republican and 1/3 are "swing" voters.
When a war breaks out, the swing 1/3 can be expected, if the provocation is sufficient, to swing to the side of the war, causing it to be prosecuted. However, once a war starts, the "2-year Rule" begins. Because no matter what the provocation, no matter what the reasoning, 1/3 of the population already opposes it and will begin immediately to attempt to end it, regardless of any other fact.
The 2-year rule states that majority support for a war will last a maximum of two years. This is because most Americans are not warlike in nature and only react after provocation. As time passes, the provocation loses its strength and the neutral 1/3 begins to swing naturally to opposition to the war. After two years, unless the war is clearly heading for outright victory, anti-war movements gain enough strength to serious effect the conduct of the war or even cause it to end.
These are the proofs:
The Revolution was an exception. It lasted longer than two years due to the determination of the minority to prosecute the war combined with the decentralized nature of the government. The neutrals and anti-war Tories were unable to influence the leaders of the rebellion because there was no real centralized government to influence - the Continental Congress was totally controlled by the war faction and there were no elections.
The War of 1812 ran dangerously close to the 2-year Rule. By 1814, the anti-war feeling in New England had reached the point that a congress of those states held in Hartford, CT was on the verge of declaring secession and seeking a separate peace with England. I believe that the willingness of the U.S. government to accept a peace which did almost nothing except establish status quo ante was given impetus because of the fear of disunion over the war.
The Mexican War was too short to run into the 2-year rule and was quickly crowned with victory so that although the anti-war movement was rapidly growing in strength towards the end of that conflict, it never got a chance to end it.
The American Civil War was torn with anti-war activity. Draft Riots throughout the north, large scale desertion in the south. Lincoln himself was doubtful of reelection and the Republicans did lose many seats in the Congress. It was only the Northern victories of the second half of 1863, the feeling of many that the North would win and the voting support of Lincoln by the Union Army kept the Republicans in power.
The Spanish-American War, the "splendid little war" only lasted a few months and didn't generate much opposition.
The First World War saw the Wilson Administration from the very start take strong steps to crush opposition, jailing many who would oppose the war. Further, the American phase of that war didn't last two years, so again anti-war movements were unable to get traction.
The Second World War was also a partial exception. The Roosevelt Administration took massive steps to silence opposition, even to the point of exiling suspect ethic groups to "camps". However, WWII by the time where the 2-year Rule would be effecting (late 1943) it was so obviously heading for a victory that most people continued to support it.
Korea was a prime example of these two principles working. In two years, the opposition to this war became so great that the Truman Administration was unable to even consider running for reelection and the Democratic Party candidate (the party of the war) was crushed by the Eisenhower campaign which promised to end the war.
Vietnam is another prime example. The anti-war movement forced Johnson out of office and it led to the election of Nixon. But Nixon failed to end the war fast enough and so it turned on him, so much so that the majority of my students come into my history class believing that the Vietnam war was the fault of Richard Nixon.
The Iraq war is also becoming a prime example. With no clear-cut victory and no clear-cut end, the hostility to the war, regardless of the reasons for it, has grown to the point where the party in power has be removed by the electorate.
Thus, the lesson to be learned is clear. The U.S. can not go into any war without majority support and at the same time, the war must be concluded, within two years.
Iraq therefore is doomed. It’s been over two years and the majority now opposes it, regardless of the consequences.
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10 comments:
What about the Cold War?
Was that a war?
I dunno. What do you think?
I think it spawned wars, ya know, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and a bunch of other stuff. Where the wars were "realized" his rule of thirds cum two years template holds up quite well. But, to me, "Cold War" was metaphor for a specific long term political struggle which provided conditions for wars to be spawned. An analogy, for whatever it means. There are certain statistical rules as to how long tornadoes last, or behave, once formed. These rules simply don't apply to the atmospheric conditions which are linked with the appearance of tornadoes. And we don't confuse the two.
Now, it could be that the struggle with IM might be seen developing similarly. With Afghanistan and Iraq seen as spefic realizations of war generated by background conditions...... Maybe, but I think the differences are suffficiently great to make this more than a superficial similarity. For example, the ideology of Communism, because it largely avoided [a mistake on its part, in hindsight] being wedded to religious institutions, could be seen and handled directly as a "purely" political movement. Whereas, with IM, the mass and clout of Islam in its entirety, conjoined with our institutional presupposition that an ideology which is enveloped within religion should not be confronted as ideology, has special protected status, washes away many of the defenses and beclouds the clarity that we generally had against Communism. This weakness is one IM seeks to exploit quickly and directly, and so open action against us occurs at a frequency and scale the USSR, for example, did not dare employ in the CW.....
But there's a lot here to think through, fo sho
The commies won their short attention span victories, though, and the US didn't chicken out. Barnett would argue (I guess) that they way we won was by economic superiority and strategic thinking....The recipe now would then be to line up the chinese and indians with us and let the muslims rot in poverty. They can't do us that much harm without an outright war...
It depends,,,,, Islam, when quickened into its IM phase, has an enviable record when it comes to "the long run". A staying and expansive power that makes Socialism blush in shame. In the short term we need not fear the notion of "military takeover", natch. But, as populations shifts, and the proportion of the world under Islam increases, and IM consolidates its reformist agenda of "purifying" the creed, we will be playing a game where the "correlation of forces" are ever more against us.
For example, it might take a few decades, and it will be seen perhaps not by us but by our children, but an Islamicized Europe, one as happy with its acquired munitions and industries as it will be disdainful of the culture which created them, will be part of the real politics of the not so distant future.
As for China and India, do not count much on them. China, for now, still calculates that we are its true rival, and is committed to a policy of helping IM strike against us [its policy of "asymmetrical warfare" and all that]. Eventually, one day, it will realize the monster it is facing with IM. Right now it considers only Xianjang, and believes it has contained the problem. Right now, it is busy clobbering those hapless Falun Gong and pathetic Christians that seek to make a go of it inChina. And is both ignoring its large Muslim population [outside of Xinjiang, an estimated 50 million inhabitants of China] and, by so brutalizing all other religious rivals, leaves Islam as the one "natural" ground for those seeking the sanctuary of a spiritual life in that nasty materialistic cruelty which is the modus operandi of the regime.
Yes, one day they will notice that all their classical "client' border states, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, are fighting, with increasing desperation, muslim insurgencies. And, when Musharraf and his type are being paraded in pieces through the streets of Islamabad and Tashkent, they will begin to understand. And as they see the convulsions Russia will go through as Islam stresses it at all points, yes, they will see "opportunity", but they will also see "crisis", and know true fear. But, by then, their options will be few other than total war or Ming like exclusion and isolation. In either case, they will be of no aid to us whatsoever.
As for India, there is no doubt its leadership is very much aware of the reality of what they face. And the Hindus will not go gently into any good night. And, if our State dept, allows it, they will try to aid us....But, India is in big trouble, JJ. The Islamic population within India is growing massively. Non muslims, like elsewhere in the world, in a somewhat free market economy , statistically strongly outperform their muslim counterparts, and with new found wealth are mimicking their western counterparts, and thus enjoying life and having fewer children. If you but pick up the Indian newpapers, each and every day brings account of terrorist attacks and regional strife, often of large scale. What is stricking is how often it is Muslim attack, followed Hindu counterattack, followed by huge Muslim counter counter-attack, and then, belatedly and reluctant, Federal intervention. ....It is already simmering guerilla warfare throughout much of India, and the government is capable, apparently, of doing nothing about it. A problem , it seems, is that the many muslims in the armed forces refuse to attack their co-religionists, the Sikh problem, with the Golden Temple of Amritsar, writ very very large.
......This is the present reality, Do you care to think about what India has to offer us, in two decades or so, when its Islamic population is much larger?
No, JJ, we stand almost alone now, but we will be even more alone in the future. Communism, in the end, was as transitory a threat as reading Aristotle would suggest it to be. But Islam Militant, which has annihilated many great civilizations which surpassed it in everything except the ideological imperative and Will, may well make a world which in which even the memory of civilizations which could conjure up dreams of democracy and reason is as distant and inconceivable as the works of an Aristotle or Heron or Thucydides or Homer are to the madrassah school boyz of Islam today.
They haven't yet, even when they had the upper hand, ade a horror as great as good old Stalin and Mao did. There's D'Souza. That's no indication, though.
Our spooks can of course bring the Chinese to our side more rapidly, of course, by getting the uighurs riled. Worked in Afghanistan...
I didn't think Vietnam was officially a declared war? Or Korea. Weren't they those nifty little "Police Actions"?
JJ, get the dictionary. Wait! Nevermind. Just keep posting Jordan Shay, or Shay Jordan pics. Hurry goddamnit!
She's hard to find, man. Been trying.
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