Vegas
05-26-2007, 11:54 PM
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=264986227400775
Defense: With America pitted against an enemy that wages war in new and unexpected ways, it's worth noting this weekend that we are blessed to no longer have to fight the way we did in the last century.
Thanks to precision weapons, for example, casualties of war include far fewer innocent civilians. And thanks to a superbly trained and equipped volunteer fighting force, we no longer have to send most of our able-bodied young men abroad, knowing that millions would never come back alive.
The rationing and blackouts that used to take a toll on American families and workplaces are a distant memory. And no longer do have we had to turn our expansive economy upside down to conduct a global war. In fact, we set aside just 4% of GDP for defense, compared with the average 37% during World War II.
But to David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, all this means is that we've become "a society that scarcely breaks a sweat" when we go to war, that we put at risk "very few of (our) sons and daughters" (and then only those who "go willingly in harm's way") and that we are able to "inflict prodigious damage on others while not appreciably disrupting (our) own civilian economy."
The observations were part of a keynote speech Kennedy delivered several weeks ago to a "technology and culture" symposium at Stanford University. But they're part of a mantra he's been peddling for years.
According to Kennedy, the U.S. has "evolved an unprecedented and uniquely American method of warfare that neither asks nor requires any large-scale personal or material contributions from the citizens on whose behalf that force is deployed." War also has become too easy for politicians, Kennedy contends, easier than what he calls the "tedious and vexatious process of diplomacy."
Kennedy laid out this romanticized view of what war should be in a New York Times op-ed nearly two years ago, lamenting the demise of the "citizen soldier" of ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. Today, we have lost "civilian society's deep and durable consent to the resort to arms," he believes.
One can't help wondering:
• Would Kennedy have bemoaned improved medicine ending the sawing off of soldiers' limbs in the Civil War, because it made war less hellish?
• Would he rather that bombs routinely land miles off their targets, killing innocent women and children, as in World War II?
• Would he prefer the incineration of tens of thousands at Dresden in 1945 to the laser-guided, civilian-sparing shock and awe at Baghdad in 2003?
In fact, Americans do not take military actions lightly today. If anything, we're too easily impressed by advocates of "tedious diplomacy" — like Nobel Peace Laureate and International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who conceded last week that Iran is three to eight years away from producing a nuclear bomb, but that the answer is for us all to "sit down together."
The fact that the Iranian threat can be remedied with cruise missiles and Stealth bombers, rather than invading armies, is cause for celebration. If modern military technology lessens our patience with diplomats who think Islamofascists can be talked out of jihad, so much the better.
As for Professor Kennedy, his dispositions should be clear from the fact he helped host a recent view at Stanford of the leftist propaganda film, "No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq."
University of Dayton history professor Larry Schweikart, in studying 10 history textbooks some time ago, found "The American Pageant," co-authored by Kennedy, to contain misleading charts disparaging President Ronald Reagan's economic record.
America's military force is more powerful and effective than ever, and kills far fewer noncombatants. Only terrorists could be upset about such a state of affairs. And some malcontent academics.
Defense: With America pitted against an enemy that wages war in new and unexpected ways, it's worth noting this weekend that we are blessed to no longer have to fight the way we did in the last century.
Thanks to precision weapons, for example, casualties of war include far fewer innocent civilians. And thanks to a superbly trained and equipped volunteer fighting force, we no longer have to send most of our able-bodied young men abroad, knowing that millions would never come back alive.
The rationing and blackouts that used to take a toll on American families and workplaces are a distant memory. And no longer do have we had to turn our expansive economy upside down to conduct a global war. In fact, we set aside just 4% of GDP for defense, compared with the average 37% during World War II.
But to David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, all this means is that we've become "a society that scarcely breaks a sweat" when we go to war, that we put at risk "very few of (our) sons and daughters" (and then only those who "go willingly in harm's way") and that we are able to "inflict prodigious damage on others while not appreciably disrupting (our) own civilian economy."
The observations were part of a keynote speech Kennedy delivered several weeks ago to a "technology and culture" symposium at Stanford University. But they're part of a mantra he's been peddling for years.
According to Kennedy, the U.S. has "evolved an unprecedented and uniquely American method of warfare that neither asks nor requires any large-scale personal or material contributions from the citizens on whose behalf that force is deployed." War also has become too easy for politicians, Kennedy contends, easier than what he calls the "tedious and vexatious process of diplomacy."
Kennedy laid out this romanticized view of what war should be in a New York Times op-ed nearly two years ago, lamenting the demise of the "citizen soldier" of ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. Today, we have lost "civilian society's deep and durable consent to the resort to arms," he believes.
One can't help wondering:
• Would Kennedy have bemoaned improved medicine ending the sawing off of soldiers' limbs in the Civil War, because it made war less hellish?
• Would he rather that bombs routinely land miles off their targets, killing innocent women and children, as in World War II?
• Would he prefer the incineration of tens of thousands at Dresden in 1945 to the laser-guided, civilian-sparing shock and awe at Baghdad in 2003?
In fact, Americans do not take military actions lightly today. If anything, we're too easily impressed by advocates of "tedious diplomacy" — like Nobel Peace Laureate and International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who conceded last week that Iran is three to eight years away from producing a nuclear bomb, but that the answer is for us all to "sit down together."
The fact that the Iranian threat can be remedied with cruise missiles and Stealth bombers, rather than invading armies, is cause for celebration. If modern military technology lessens our patience with diplomats who think Islamofascists can be talked out of jihad, so much the better.
As for Professor Kennedy, his dispositions should be clear from the fact he helped host a recent view at Stanford of the leftist propaganda film, "No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq."
University of Dayton history professor Larry Schweikart, in studying 10 history textbooks some time ago, found "The American Pageant," co-authored by Kennedy, to contain misleading charts disparaging President Ronald Reagan's economic record.
America's military force is more powerful and effective than ever, and kills far fewer noncombatants. Only terrorists could be upset about such a state of affairs. And some malcontent academics.