acknowledge failure. The victors must have their triumph, plus the privilege
of dictating the terms of peace as they see fit. If this process does not
occur, then there is no closing, no climacteric. The war remains unended on
the symbolic and psychological level, which means, for all practical
purposes, that it hasn't ended at all.
Victory goes a long way toward shaping a war. A mishandled victory often
leads to a failed peace. Consider WW I: the brutal provisions of the 1919
Versailles Treaty, which humiliated Germany, made it impossible for the
Germans to recover in good order and set the stage for the rise of Hitler.
It also did nothing to redeem the anguish and misery of the four years of
the trenches, much less the 16 million-plus dead.
Then turn to our own Civil War. During the last months, there was talk among
Rebel forces of refusing to surrender, of taking to the hills to really make
the Yankees bleed. That ended at Appomattox, in large part due to two
distinct gestures. The first by Grant who, distracted by the gleam of Lee's
sword, added a line to the surrender document directing that "officers will
retain their sidearms". The other was by the legendary Joshua Chamberlain,
at that time holding the rank of brigadier general. As Confederate troops
approached to lay down their arms, Chamberlain ordered his men to salute as
they passed. The Rebels gazed back stunned for a moment, then returned the
salute. That was all it took. From that point on that war was over. Despite
regional tensions between the South and the rest of the country that
continued for a century, the thought of secession never seriously recurred.
Without a just ending, war is merely a parade of atrocities and massacres,
killer apes doing what killer apes have done for three million years or
more. It is the victor who gives shape to the ending, who decides whether it
will be yet another episode in the long Halloween or something that partakes
of the higher aspects of human nature: mercy, honor, and reconciliation.
Which is why victory is hated by antiwar types, no matter what their
ideology and motivation. (This is not even to mention the agendas of the
hard left and the Democrats, which we don't have space to get into.) They
don't want war redeemed. Anything that lessens its loathsome aspects makes
it easier to view war as a possibility. Victory is one of the failings of
war that must be gotten rid of. But of course, in any conflict (excepting
wars of exhaustion, which we don't often see) there will be winner and a
loser. Victory can't be denied to that extent. But the rituals, the salutes,
the expressions of respect and magnanimity, can be undermined. And so we get
buried victories.
A buried victory is one that has been downgraded and ignored, one that has
been hedged with so many qualifications and second thoughts that it is
scarcely a victory at all any longer. A buried victory is one from which all
the human aspects have been drained, and replaced -- if that's the word --
with bureaucratic procedure.
We've seen this for fifty years or more. U.S. forces had effectively secured
most of South Vietnam by 1972. The Viet Cong had been a nullity since being
effectively wiped out during the Tet Offensive, and the People's Army of
North Vietnam had to a large extent been chased across the borders into
Cambodia and Laos. South Vietnam was a stable political entity, and with
adequate support could have remained that way.
But the American left, for purely political reasons, portrayed the situation
as a defeat, and in a series of Congressional actions through 1973 and 1974,
cut off support for the Saigon government until it was hanging by a string.
It fell at last on April 30, 1975, after a heroic final defense at the gates
of the city.
In the years that followed, close to 3 million were murdered in Southeast
Asia.
In 1991, having wiped out the bulk of the Iraqi Army in a matter of days,
the U.S. contented itself with an incomplete victory. It unilaterally
brought the war to a close without demanding recognition of defeat from the
Iraqi military, and above all, from Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath Party.
Instead of a clear victory, we were treated to the spectacle of U.S. forces
standing by while thousands of innocent Shi'ites and Kurds were slaughtered.
Twelve years later, we had to do it all over again, under -- as we are all
now well aware -- far more difficult circumstances. (Being self-inflicted,
this is another case of Bush Senior adapting the ideas and behavior of his
opposition -- "read my lips" in military form.)
(Compare those two incidents to the Grenada and Panama conflicts. In both
cases, the U.S. fought to the finish, destroyed enemy capabilities, brought
down the tyrannies, and remained to oversee the reestablishment of civil
government. Today both are free and prosperous nations.)
But the most egregious example is the Cold War. Only those who lived through
the period have any clear idea of the miracle embodied in that conflict's
end. For decades, it was widely believed that the Cold War could climax only
with a universal catastrophe, or at least a paroxysm that would leave tens
of millions dead. But thanks to Reagan's boldness and acumen, (and not to
forget Gorbachev's humanity) it closed without a single ICBM so much as
quivering in its silo.
It was one of the great victories of the modern epoch, one of a trio of
defeats handed out to the enemies of human freedom during the 20th century:
absolutism, fascism, and at last, communism. A victory at the highest levels
of human endeavor, with nothing of the primitive or brutish about it. "One
of the great unsordid acts," as Churchill once put it. At the same time, it
was a victory of the common and workaday, in which the average and
unheralded individual shared as much in the triumph as any general or
diplomat or premier. A glance at the footage of the destruction of the
Berlin Wall will reveal as much.
And it was buried.
"Let's not engage in triumphalism," we were told by the media, by the left,
by the academics. "Let's not humiliate the Russians... Both sides were at
fault here." We were even told that "Now capitalism must be defeated." As if
capitalism ever built walls, or Gulags, or massacred millions for the sake
of demonstrating a theory.
In not taking its place as the rightful victor, the U.S. was unable to mold
the post-Cold War world as it molded Europe after WW II. Bush Senior could
talk all he liked about a "New World Order", but nothing of the sort came
into being. An individual transported to the present from the mid-1980s
would have no difficulty recognizing the world he saw about him -- a
belligerent Russia, a conniving and expansionist China, a Latin America
flirting for the hundredth time with Marxism, an Africa on the skids. Even
Burma in a state of political chaos.
The sole new aspect is the internationalization of religious terror by the
Jihadis. In 1989, the U.S. was given a once-in-a-century opportunity to
remake the global community in the manner of the Treaty of Westphalia or
the Congress of Vienna. We decided to be a New Age, politically-correct
country instead. Does anyone like the result?
Today we see a similar process occurring in Iraq and in the
Afghanistan/Pakistan arena. None of the achievements of the Coalition or the
Iraqis has gained more than momentary recognition. The purple revolution,
the elections, the reconstruction -- all have been dismissed or ignored.
What has replaced them is an endless chronicle of suffering and
destruction - of war without victory. (In what other conflict would Arthur
Chrenkoff's sorely-missed "good news from Iraq" column have been necessary?)
The "Mission Accomplished" incident set the tone. George W. Bush's
appearance in a military flight suit beneath the banner bearing those words
was greeted with a storm of insults and mockery that grew more frantic as
the violence in Iraq failed to abate. Today, many believe -- because they
were led to believe -- that the banner was placed there by the
administration itself, in the kind of cowboy gesture often ascribed to Bush,
though seldom actually seen. In truth, it was the work of the ship's crew,
who had completed a difficult job with no serious losses and were proud of
the fact. This truth failed to get across, and now it will never get across.
There will be history books a century from now explaining how Karl Rove put
that banner up personally.
Once burned, the administration -- along with other branches and agencies of
the government -- has been unwilling to claim any accomplishments
whatsoever. Saddam Hussein's capture passed without much in the way of
acknowledgment. (Quick -- what troops captured him and how were they
rewarded?) The same with the killing of Zarqawi and numerous other
incidents. Even when making a claim, government spokesmen end with the same
sorry whimper, "Of course -- we still have a long way to go.... " providing
the media with the precise peg they need to hang their stories on.
And the media has obliged. News reports of Coalition or Iraqi achievements
became conventional, their form and content as invariable as a Noh play.
First would come the announcement of a Coalition triumph -- the capture of
an Al-Queda emir, the breakup of a bombing ring -- written in what amounted
to a dull monotone. Then the counterpoint: how many bombs went off that day,
how many civilians had been killed, how many troops (always ending with the
number added to the war's overall total). This part was usually longer than
the first, and often enlivened by quotes, eyewitness reportage, and local
color, in contrast to the dull prose of the "official news". So each
announcement of a triumph was accompanied by its own negation. A narrative
has
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