At War II - What to Expect - Brief Article

National Review, Oct 15, 2001

What can we say about the arc of the war we have entered? President Bush has prudently withheld many strategic details. (During the Gulf War, a "reporter" in a Saturday Night Live sketch asked "General Schwarzkopf" at a briefing: "If there is one thing you don't want Saddam Hussein to know, what would that be?") But what general traits can we foresee?

The enemy will try to strike again, and he won't try hijacking. Copycats may attempt to turn airplanes into bombs, and they will fail, since the learning curve of Americans was quite steep: The fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania because heroic passengers, already knowing the fate of the other three, fought the enemy. The terrorists' next attempted weapons will probably be germs or nuclear bombs, either smuggled out of the former Soviet Union or slipped to them by Pakistani soulmates. The effects could be grave, although the deaths we have already suffered are comparable to the likely casualties of a crude nuclear weapon.

Most of our allies will disappoint us in every conceivable way, from minor annoyance to spectacular betrayal. The great power on the sidelines, China, will fish in troubled waters. This is the history of coalition warfare. World War II, so black and white in our memory, saw two major players, the Soviet Union and France, switch sides, while lesser European nations, such as Spain, blew with the prevailing winds. Queen Elizabeth II sang "The Star-Spangled Banner," and Israel declared a day of mourning: That about exhausts the short list of dependables. So the burden will be on us-nothing new there.

American unanimity is sky high now. In a flash, the map of blue and red counties became uniformly red, white, and blue. But this is unusual in the history of American warfare. There were Tories during the Revolution, secessionists in the War of 1812, Copperheads in the Civil War, and a great reluctant Germanic heartland in the run-up to World War I. Vietnam has been the norm of American history rather than the exception. There will be protests, and treason (not all the recent immigrants in our Arab communities were as shocked as a zealously tolerant media has reported).

War is uncertain. Wars are often long, a matter of years at least. There will be casualties. We know that already, having sustained over 6,000. Our soldiers will kill and be killed, and foreign civilians will die as a consequence of our actions. The wicked who profess to act in the name of God should have thought of this before they took up the devil's work.

The war, as President Bush told Congress, will end in victory. The lineup of opposed forces makes this result likely; our resolve, catalyzed by the enemy's baseness, makes it inevitable. We face a well- funded terror network of zealous and intelligent freaks, supported by a handful of second-rate despotisms. We do not have to conquer them all; we have to crush some, and bribe, divide, and muzzle the rest. Piracy and the slave trade were ended in lawless parts of the world, and so will this form of terrorism. New forms will arise, for the heart of man is desperately wicked. But we will win this round.