History and War

As I continue through Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture, I am just aghast at how little "Western Civ" I know. In addition, as I learn more, I really do begin to see just how relevant that history is to today.

From his site today, a fairly lengthy piece from the American Enterprise Magazine:

"Apart from these specific historical lessons, there are four bothersome facts about war that contemporary minds, full of utopian hopes, often fail to grasp.

First: There is often a savage utility to war. The great pathologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries —— slavery, Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism, and communism —— were ended only through force and military deterrence. More recently, brutal bullies like Manuel Noriega, Slobodan Milosevic, and Mullah Omar were stopped from preying on others only by the barrel of a gun. The U.S. military did more in three weeks early in 2003 to save threatened Iraqis and begin humanitarian improvements than 12 years of no-fly zones and a fraudulent United Nations Oil-for Food program had accomplished."

I know, I've become an absolute groupie.