Over the next few weeks (perhaps even days), “Haditha” is going to become as familiar a place name to many Americans are “My Lai” and “Abu Ghraib” are today. The hate-America-first media will see to it that the weak-kneed public is inundated with stories about evil American Marines and poor suffering Moslems. Support for the war (not to mention the President’s approval numbers) will probably drop a little more. The growing ranks of limp-wristed hawks will be swelled by legions of preening moral poseurs eager to shout, “Not in my name!”
As is typically the case when the media wants to smear the United States military, the details of what happened have been deliberately obscured. Essentially we are told that an IED went off, a Marine was killed, and a group of Marines flipped out and killed everyone within sight. I don’t think that’s what happened at all.

Indeed, while most accounts of what happened remain confusing and unclear, I think that a fairly clear picture of what happened can be gained by reading through the lines. While current reports tend to obscure exactly what went on, an AP report from March that I managed to dig up revealed some telling details.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002199897

Most of the men appear to have been shot in the head – kill shots. Several of the children survived and, in general, the ones who were killed appear to have been shot in the arm and the like. Why is this worth noting (and why does it seem to be left out of current reports)? Simply, because it paints a very different picture than a straight-out “massacre” of anyone and everyone.

When the reports come out, I think that we’re going to find that an IED went off near the homes where most of the civilians were killed. The Marines entered a local home where they believed that they were in danger – and so they opened fire. The only people who may have been “executed” are some of the men – and, given that the city is an insurgent stronghold and they are likely supporters of terror – the hell with them. Moslem men who stand by while terrorists plant bombs which kill Marines are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and ought to share the fate that the terrorists deserve – instant death.

The deaths of children are always regrettable. But there isn’t a shred of evidence to support the slanderous accusation that the Marines killed them deliberately. Indeed, the moral fault for their deaths ought to be laid squarely at the feet of the terrorists, who made the use of force by the Marines necessary.

This isn’t a big deal. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be a big deal. These things happen in war. That it is going to be magnified, distorted, and blown up to slander the President and the American armed forces is simply another sign of how closely the global media is aligned with our enemies. They share a common agenda: the destruction of American power.The coming fuss over this minor incident – much like the ridiculous trouble over Abu Ghraib, wiretapping, Guantanamo Bay, and so on show exactly why this war has dragged on: we lack the will to win that our ancestors did.

I was browsing through the bookstore the other day and came across a book by British philosopher A. C. Grayling, entitled “Among the Dead Cities.” The central thesis of the book is that the Allied bombing campaigns against German and Japanese cities were war crimes. This view – particularly as it extends to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – is tragically prevalent today. It prevails because we live in an age of softness and have been raised to believe kindness is the greatest of moral virtues and that weak-hearted cowardice is really the epitome of strength. It is tragic because this ethical exercise has effects in the real world: it makes us less willing to repeat actions which were successful in the past and, in so doing, makes it so much harder for us to win wars.

How does a nation win a modern war? Are wars won simply through the defeat of armies in the field? Or are wars won by totally destroying the ability of an enemy to make war: physical, economic, and moral?

The three greatest and most decisive wars fought by the United States – the Civil War, the Second World War, and the Indian Wars – were won by waging a total war against our enemies. It wasn’t just Grant’s Army of the Potomac that won the war – it was Sherman slicing across Georgia and then burning his way up through the Carolinas. In World War Two, it wasn’t just destruction of the Japanese Navy which compelled Japan’s surrender – it was Tokyo, it was Hiroshima, and it was Nagasaki. The wars to conquer this continent were not won simply through engagements in the field, but through the methodical displacement, slaughter, and subjugation of all who stood in the war.

Of course, the United States has fought and won other wars. But only in those three wars were the issues totally and completely settled. The South will never secede again. Germany and Japan will probably never threaten America again. The Indians will never slaughter any more settlers or seriously contest control of the continent. Those wars are over forever.

That wasn’t and isn’t so true in other cases. The unfinished issues of the Revolution led to 1812. The legacy of the Mexican War is with us today. The Great War took another World War to be truly settled. Korea is still a stalemate. Vietnam is in Communist hands. Kuwait led to the Iraq War. The Balkans are still a mess.

Of course, there would good reasons for leaving some of those wars unfinished. America didn’t have the ability to inflict any more damage on Britain at the end of the Revolution. The Great War was going to be the “war to end all wars.” And so on. But together, we learn an object lesson: only those wars which end in the total destruction and, indeed, the humiliation of one side are truly ever over. Wars which end in such a way as to allow an enemy to retain its pride are simply the mothers of future conflicts.

This is a lesson of history which the United States has consistently failed to apply since the Second World War. Since then the United States has failed to wage a single real war. Instead, it’s fought what the great MacArthur dubbed “half war” time and time again: and time and time again it has failed.

In Korea, all that half war brought the world was a stalemate. The result was a permanently divided Korean peninsula and a China which paid no price for its aggression and, thus, was emboldened to support our enemies during Vietnam.

In Vietnam, half war brought America its first defeat, as the lack of strategic momentum abroad gave America’s enemies – both foreign and domestic – an opening which they fully exploited. If America had fought Vietnam full-out, traitors at home would never have had their chance to stab the American fighting man in the back.

In Kuwait in 1991, half war brought us a half victory. Had America marched onto Baghdad in 1991, many of the world’s present troubles may have been averted and modern Iraq might have been spared the awful fate that has overtaken it.

Yet, once again, we are waging half war against our enemies. Our constant refusal to use the necessary level of force – and our endless moral debates about minor incidents like Haditha and Abu Ghraib – give our enemy courage. The more that we hesitate, the more that we engage in Hamletesque soliloquies, the more we flagellate ourselves for our supposed sins – the most confidence our enemies gain that we lack the will to win this war.

If we want to turn back terror – if we want to save our civilization (and for many people those are very big ifs indeed) – then we need to stop waging this half war and start waging total war instead.

Now, some will correctly point out that this war can’t be fought as a “total war” in the sense that World War Two or the Civil War was fought. There’s no Richmond or Berlin to march onto in this war. No, for inspiration we have to look to America’s other total war: the war against the Indian tribes.

That will, I am very certain, be regarded as a terrible thing to say. After all, today the wars against the Indians are regarded as one of America’s great national sins – not something to be proud of or to emulate. But they are something to be proud of. During the Indian Wars the United States, with a relatively minimal expenditure, accomplished a feat which has never been enduringly accomplished anywhere else in the world – they conquered and held most of a continent.

The Indians that America fought back then were savages – primitive tribes which were basically unworthy (whatever nonsense has now sprung about them) of even being known as a “civilization.” They were wasting some of the greatest lands on this Earth and assaulting those innocents who attempted to spread the blessings of civilization. They deserved the defeat they suffered.Our strategy for defeating the Islamist challenge ought to resemble that which we used for the conquest of this continent. The Moslem world is latter-day Indian country. Bit by bit we ought to retake the lands owned by Moslems from savagery, gradually spreading civilization as we move forward. A total war in this case is plodding and methodical – but also fiercely determined.

We are determined to assure our own security. We can best do this by – we can end the Indian raids on our lands – by gradually driving the Indians out. And when they kill some of ours, we should kill more of theirs.

That’s where Haditha comes back into this picture. In the early 1920’s, the British faced a full-scale national uprising in Iraq and put it down with fewer troops and in less time than it has taken the United States to deal with a much less serious “insurgency.” That’s because the British used real force. They used poison gas. They burned down villages. That’s war.
Because we’re waging a half war in Iraq – because American forces are forced to fight clean while our enemies fight dirty - what really happened at Haditha (seemingly the killing of men who stood by and thereby gave support to our enemies) is regarded as a great crime when, instead, it ought to be national policy.

We will never tame our enemies by kindness. We will never, no matter how long and hard we try, make them love us. So we should make them fear us. We should make them all fear us. Put the fear of God into them and, bit by bit, year by year, we will tame them.