Will to Fight

One of my favorite blogs is neo-neocon, written by an ex-liberal turned conservative after 9/11. Her posts are real ponders, full of informed thinking and ideas. Definitely a post-coffee read, and on my list for every morning.

This morning she pointed me to a post on another blog, and (as she also says) it is simply excellent. Thanks, neo! A sample:

From Searchlight Crusade:

History is replete with superior armies, winning armies, defeated because they lost the will to continue. From battles at Cannae and Hastings to entire wars, the struggle is lost when the will to fight is lost.

On historical battlefields, and in historical wars, after this point is where the real carnage begins. However bad it gets, however horrible the casualties before the losers collapse, they usually become an order of magnitude worse afterwards. Roman casualties before the troops panicked at Cannae weren’t large. If they had instead of panicking managed to hold cohesion they could have aborted the majority of the Second Punic War right there by breaking Hannibal instead of him breaking them. The well-documented barbarities of the combatants upon the populace in Thirty Years War in Germany, the whole history of the Russian front in World War II, and countless other conflicts are more historical norm than anomaly, and had far longer casualty lists that the battles themselves.

The struggle we are fighting now is no different. Our opponent is not constrained by, indeed, makes no pretense that they are constrained by any consideration of “civilized warfare.” They have told us repeatedly, by their actions, that they do not consider civilian targets to be “off limits,” indeed, their attacks on civilians, and the number of civilian casualties, greatly outnumber their attacks upon our military and our military casualties.

Furthermore, they have told us repeatedly exactly what their strategic goals are: nothing short of the annihilition of our society and way of life as it exists. This is understandable, as our civilization’s great memes are in direct conflict with theirs. Evolving wisdom as opposed to revealed historical wisdom. Individual freedom of religion as opposed to enforced submission to the rule of one particular religion. However recently and imperfectly we may have come to it, respect for women and minorities of all sorts, and participation in our ruling bodies, versus subjugation of women to men, subjugation of others to the dominant religion, heavy ongoing penalties for those outside the favored class of the ruling religion.

Overall the piece is mostly about the importance of the will to fight, and about the corollary — that our enemy could not find a better way to win than by causing us to lose our will to fight. But as you can see in the sample, he’s also writing about why he feels the fight is justified. And eloquence here expresses my own position better than I’ve ever been able to.

It’s a longish piece, but well worth reading and pondering. Please read the whole thing.