McClellan, who was relieved of his military duties in March of 1862, famously ran for President against Lincoln on an antiwar platform in 1864. He lost, partly due to the impressive battle victories of one of his successors, Sherman, who was his very antithesis.

Kagan writes about the ever-controversial General Sherman [emphasis mine]:

The northern generals who prosecuted the war most effectively , and most ruthlessly, had more understanding of its ideological purposes..."We are not only fighting hostile armies," William Tecumseh Sherman declared, "but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war"....Therefore the North must "make the war so terrible...[and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it "...The Union's conduct of the Civil War would remain, for American commanders in both world wars of the twentieth century, the very model of a great war...a war of 'power unrestrained' unleashed for 'complete conquest.'

Sherman famously said "War is hell," a stark statement that encapsulates the horror of war. He's been accused of committing war crimes during the Civil War, but the evidence is that his campaign against the civilians of the South was mainly limited to destroying property, although it certainly caused a great deal of suffering--as intended.

Sherman also had a way with words. He's the author of many famous quotes about war which show a fascinating combination of the compassionate and the implacable. Sherman felt the two were closely linked in war--in order to ultimately be compassionate, one had to be ruthless, because half-measures kept the population in an undefeated state, ready to wage war again:

Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and defeat.

The scenes on this field would cure anyone of war.

War as a remedy for war--it seems paradoxical. And yet, it worked for Sherman. And it seems that the dreadful wars of the twentieth century--World Wars I and II--bore out the principle that if a war is bad enough that a people actually feels defeated (not just humiliated or tricked, but defeated and war weary), they are unlikely to start another.

The First World War, bloody and vicious though it was, was not really a total war in the sense Sherman meant, although it came close. Fought mainly by armies (although those armies were decimated; an entire generation of Europeans lost its "best and brightest" men) it was stalemated for an exceptionally long time, and ended through an armistice--and then a treaty, Versailles--that was so unsatisfactory in resolving it that World War II was not long in coming.

The reasons the Germans were able to come back so quickly to start another war, despite their defeat in WWI, are complex. But one of them was probably the fact that although they felt humiliated by the terms of the Treaty, they somehow managed to feel that they had not really been conquered. In fact, in his rise to power, Hitler played on that perception: German defeat was not a "real" defeat, but the result of a betrayal by domestic forces of a varied nature (including, of course, the Jews)--the "stab in the back" theory.

World War II was, by all definitions, a total war. It involved civilian populations far more heavily; in WWI, most of the civilian deaths had been from influenza and famine, but World War II featured heavy civilian bombardment as a common tactic of the war. In fact, it seems that the experience of the total war of WWII decisively ended even the idea of warfare for Western Europe. It made its inhabitants, harking back to Sherman's words about the South, "so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it."

Revulsion for what they suffered during World Wars I and II--compared to the relative lack of suffering on American soil--is part of what has led to European pacifism and belief in the talking cure, as well as their contempt for what they see as America's tendency to resort far too easily to war. Europe feels itself to have been "cured" of war. The only problem, of course, is that the cure hasn't spread to the world of Islamic totalitarianism. Au contraire.

The first Gulf War was very different than the American Civil War, World War I, or World War II. The Gulf War was waged in a comparatively "easy and safe"--and limited--manner. However, contradicting Sherman's statement that such wars end in defeat, it was won by the US and its allies.

On reflection, though, Sherman appears to have been correct, after all. The Gulf War was "won," but the win was so limited that it led almost inevitably to the present Iraq War. Saddam's defiance at the end of the Gulf War; his massacre of those who, counting on our help, rose up against him; and his flouting of sanctions and inspections; clearly indicated that neither he nor the Iraqi people (except for his victims) had felt the sting of true defeat.

The present Iraq War illustrates the same dilemma of the "easy and safe" war leading to defeat--or, in this case, the perception of defeat, one that seems to have overwhelmed much of our electorate and our MSM.

"Easy and safe" (relatively speaking, of course; no war is either) is a good description of the initial military campaign of the Iraq War. The degree to which that first stage was "easy and safe" was the degree to which the forces now wreaking havoc there felt undefeated. At the time, it was "easy" for them to pretend to roll over during the initial war, which lasted only a few weeks, and then to regroup for the asymmetrical war they've been fighting ever since (a war which, like all modern wars, appeals to our own media--which certainly doesn't seem to need a total war to feel defeated).

I am most decidedly not advocating using the civilian bombardment techniques of World War II in Iraq. But I am suggesting that we acknowledge that we need to be willing to do what is necessary to win, and to make the actual enemy feel conquered (a la, take out al Sadr and his minions, for starters), and not to just go for "easy and safe." If we do the latter, we are doing no one a favor--including most of the Iraqi people.

[General Sherman on the topic of the MSM:

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.]

[Cross-posted at neo-neocon.]

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But today, as Nancy Pelosi recently put it, "You can define victory any way you want." And war, she said, was only "a situation to be resolved." If this sort of glibness makes the current war seem a directionless postmodern adventure, it is only because those who call us to war have themselves left the definition of victory wide open.

Steele thinks--and I agree--that it's not just the Iraq War that's lacked a definition of victory. As Richard Fernandez writes at his blog Belmont Club, we seem to have a problem with the general concept of a war--except for limited, targeted "operations" such as the first Gulf War.

Any proposed solution to the current conflict with Islamic totalitarianism that fails to take into account its worldwide scope, relentless nature, and willingness to fight very dirty, is going to be a half-baked effort. In order to mount a "successful" campaign with an effective plan, we not only need creativity and intelligence, we need commitment, focus, and an understanding that this will be a long hard fight.

In the beginning of the so-called "War on Terror," Bush's rhetoric did indicate a long, hard fight. But I don't think he prepared the American people for what the Iraq War would entail. Whether this was because he was afraid they wouldn't go along if he described it, or whether he himself (and his advisors) were unaware of how very long and difficult it would be, I don't know. Probably it was some combination of the two; not a good thing.

But at this point we know it will be very long and very hard. I'm pretty sure Bush and all his advisors know that by now, as well. An asymmetrical war against those who will use terror not only with relative impunity but with joy, who believe themselves divinely inspired, and who number in the millions and are spread throughout the world, and who have an interest in foiling us in Iraq--by definition, that's going to be a long hard slog.

But besides the inherent difficulties in defining "success" against a shadowy, non-state entity, Steele thinks Americans have other difficulties in understanding--or, perhaps, accepting would be a better word--what victory in Iraq would look like. Steele thinks the problem stems from our modern-day ambivalence over our superpower status, which makes us want (in this postmodern, anticolonial world) to deny the responsibilities that go with it--duties that hark back to that dread word, imperialism.

Steele thinks that reluctance to accept responsibility is the reason we lack the will to impose the sort of occupation I discussed here. At the end of WWII, America had virtually no such guilt about the occupation of Japan and Germany. This ambivalence/guilt is mainly a post-WWII (and, specifically, post-60s and post-Vietnam) phenomenon.

Steele doesn't mention any psychological reasons for this rejection of responsibility (although, for the boomer generation, I would posit them), but rather, philosophical ones:

Today our antiwar movement is essentially an argument with this fate, a rejection of superpower responsibility.

And this fear of responsibility is what makes us ambivalent toward the idea of victory. Because victory is hegemonic, it mimics colonialism. A complete American victory in Iraq would put that nation--at least for a time--entirely under American power and sovereignty. We would in fact "own" the society as a colony.

He is correct; an occupation does mimic colonialism. But, although related, it isn't quite the same. We did not "own" post-WWII Japan or West Germany as traditional colonies, for example, although we did exercise a great deal of control over them and took responsibility for them.

Traditionally, colonies existed not only as spoils of war, nor as objects of occupation for reforming their governments into functioning democracies protective of human rights and therefore unlikely to aggressively threaten us again (the motives for our occupations of Japan and Germany), nor even as ways to expand a certain culture and way of life (although they were often that, too). Colonies were also ordinarily taken over in order to exploit their natural resources to the good of the imperialist power: in other words, to plunder.

This accusation of motivations of plunder--of an "unjust" motive for the Iraq War--has been at the heart of the belief system (or at least the rhetoric, sincere or not) of the antiwar movement. It's at the base of the "no blood for oil" cries, for example.

To those making the charges, there's no real need to prove we actually are exploiting or appropriating the oil; the accusation stands as symbolic of what colonial powers always do. If the accuser accepts that the US is an imperialist colonialist power, then ipso facto our motivation must be this sort of economic exploitation, which would be both morally wrong and a throwback to the age of colonialism and subjugation of the third world for our (historically, more often Europe's) own purposes.

The causes of the Iraq War have been disputed, and for many they are a confusing and troubling aspect of the war itself. In contrast to Afghanistan, which was known to harbor al Qaeda and therefore was directly implicated in the 9/11 attack on the US, the stated rationales for going to war with Iraq were legalistic, defensive, and moral.

The legalistic and defensive reasons for the war were Iraq's multiple violations of the terms that ended the Gulf War, including Saddam's spotty "cooperation" with weapons inspections. And these reasons were, in turn, part a defense of--of all things--the power of the UN to put teeth into its resolutions.

As such, the current war was actually a continuation of the 1991 Gulf War after a more than decades-long pause. The UN resolutions that were violated included ones concerning WMDs, part of the armistice for that Gulf War, as well. Saddam's noncompliance had been winked at many times, but in light of 9/11 it was considered far more important than before to make sure Saddam did not have nuclear weapons that he could put into the hands of terrorists or use on his neighbors. This was the directly self-defensive part of the rationale for the war (and, by the way, Bush's speech on the subject said that we did not have to wait till this threat was "imminent" in order to act).

Then, of course, there were the stated humanitarian goals of the war. We wanted to liberate the people of Iraq from an oppressor, Saddam. This was not the only reason to go to war, of course, but it was definitely part of it. And even this part got us into trouble--paradoxically, because it's the most morally "pure" part of our motivation. One way it got us into trouble was that--to those who think the US is an evil imperialist power--it was considered just a screen for the "real," selfish motivation for the war: colonialism. Another reason is that with the toppling of Saddam went the responsibility for establishing a functioning government in a country that had been ruled by tyranny and terror for many decades. It was predictable that there would be a jockeying for power among factions, and that it wouldn't be pretty, and that the occupation would require a firm hand and would take a long time, although I don't recall this ever being explicitly stated prior to the war. I believe it should have been emphasized.

To have been emphasized, of course, it would have to have been acknowledged and known. I'm not sure that was the case; if it was not, that would have been a huge failing on the part of the planners of this war.

Transforming Iraq into a nonchaotic state has proven very difficult. But in my opinion, one of the reasons it's been so very hard is that we were ambivalent in our dedication to that goal from the start. We tried to implement it with half-measures that smacked of PC correctness--the best example being the hands-off policy towards al Sadr when his support was still relatively small.

Without an acceptance of the fact that we are an occupation force in Iraq, and all that entails, there's no way the country can be prevented from sliding into chaos, or from falling under the domination of neighbors who are up to no good. That knowledge, I believe, is what's behind the current calls to increase the number of our forces there, if only temporarily. Because, make no mistake about it: if we're reluctant to "occupy" because of the resemblance of occupation to colonialism, our enemies entertain no such moral quandaries.

As with the USSR during the Cold War, Iran would like expand its power and influence in the region. But Iran is only one of the faces of our enemy. There are others (al Qaeda, or Syria, for example). They resemble each other in ignoring the niceties we pay so much attention to. For the most part, they couldn't care less about human rights--or human life, for that matter. And of course, being third-world countries, they are somehow exempt from those nefarious charges of colonialism and imperialism--even though they nakedly and boldly lust for those things (and in some cases, already practice them) themselves.

So, what would victory in the "War on Terror" (better phrase: the war against Islamic totalitarianism) look like? Would we at least know it if we saw it? Would it be a decrease in the number of terrorist attacks, or just in our perception of their likelihood? That would certainly be part of such a victory.

Would it have to include a relatively well-functioning and prosperous Middle East? Try as I might, it's hard to see how the first goal (decrease in the risk of terrorist attacks on us) could be effected without the second, because the hatred and jihadism in that part of the world is fueled by its dysfunctional governments and societies, which are legion. In the modern world, we cannot effectively wall ourselves off from this threat; we must do something about its wellsprings.

That was the real basis for the "moral" argument for starting the Iraq War. Those who were against that war and who argued that, since there were so many other tyrants in the world, why not depose them as well if we were going to go after Saddam, were trying to make the point that there was some self-interest behind our altruistic words about tyrants. And indeed, there was.

But that doesn't invalidate them. Sometimes things are both morally right and in our best interests. And both things are true of reforming the Middle East.

But what a task! How much of this could--or should--be under our control? And how best to go about it (that's what the arguments regarding Iran are all about: talks, vs. clandestine operations to support anti-government groups, vs. military action, limited or otherwise)?

Even if reform of the area is something we could effect, at least theoretically, how much are we willing to spend in money, time, and blood, to achieve it? We've never answered these questions, but the answers depend in good part on how high we evaluate the risk of doing nothing.

To me, the choice is obvious. In fact, it's not even a choice; we chose neither this war nor this enemy. They chose us, and they are not about to change their minds and unchoose us. We cannot ignore the situation, or leave and pretend it will go away. It will not.

So we need a government that is not afraid to use the "s" word--success--and is willing to define it, and able to describe to the American people just what it will take to achieve it.

[Cross-posted at neo-neocon.]

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Well, that would be victory, all right. But is anything short of that failure? Probably not. But, if not, where do we draw the line between the two? After all, a nation running as smoothly as that was always a highly unrealistic short-term goal for Iraq--and by "short-term" I mean anything less than a few decades, or even longer.

So, how should we define a realistic and relatively short-term (a couple of years) victory in Iraq? Although it's difficult to do so, it seems necessary in order to know whether we ever achieve it, or even come close to it.

Our early definition of victory in Iraq was simple, but very incomplete: deposing Saddam. That was done with relative ease, but had we left at that point the country would have devolved into chaos. Leaving prematurely is a big problem; in fact, the current Iraq War can be seen as an attempt to deal with the situation left by the very unfinished business of the first Gulf War, in which "success" was too narrowly defined.

Commenter Ymarsakar had this to say recently on the subject of success in this war versus previous, more traditional, ones:

The thing you have to remember about WWII...is that people could know whether victory or defeat was close by, by casualty lists and whether a battle was won or lost, territory gained or won. In a guerrila war as with Iraq, that doesn't seem very clear. I mean, the US won all the battles so far, and yet we have violence every day, but we control all the territory, but and but and but. The human mind is not wired for this kind of fight and flight, fight then flight then fight then flight then fight schism. Because it pulls you from one way to the other, and eventually you will shred.

I think you know that the loss of the Pacific Fleet left the entire Western seaboard of America open to Japanese invasion. It was a palpable sense of dread and DEFEAT, the idea that you could lose. You NEED that for resolve. In Iraq, the idea that we will lose, is not there, but the idea that we "aren't winning" is there. So it creates friction.

One of President Bush's major communication failures was on the subject of what success would look like in this particular war. Some say it should have been limited to toppling Saddam, although that would have left the country in chaos. The traditional realpolitik solution would have been to have backed another strong man as replacement--a dictator, but "our" dictator--and hope for the best (the Shah of Iran was an example of this approach in the past).

Our venture in Iraq had a more lofty ultimate, long-term goal (although the amount of time and effort necessary to achieve that goal was poorly defined): to help the Iraqis towards a functioning democracy rather than a dictatorship, somewhat resembling the occupation of Japan and West Germany and the establishment of democracies there after WWII (and yes, the differences between Iraq and the those countries, as well as the perception of defeat by the populations involved, are profound) . Whether or not that goal could have been achieved with a more forceful and committed occupation in Iraq (see this for a discussion), or could still be achieved, there's no doubt that it has not been achieved at this point in time.

But Victor Davis Hanson points to the fact that the jihadis don't seem to think they've achieved success yet, either:

We forget that the jihadist websites are still worried about Iraq, both the losses suffered there, and the emergence of a democratic government. We think we are not winning, but so do they think they aren’t either.

Recently President Bush was careful to refer to the "pace of success" in Iraq as being too slow, rather than mentioning the "F" word, failure. He said:

You want frankness? I thought we would succeed quicker than we did. And I am disappointed by the pace of success.

Semantics, right? Not entirely. How something is framed does indeed affect our view of it.

There are many, of course, who would consider that comment of Bush's ludicrous: to them, it's obvious that our venture in Iraq is a failure already, and to speak of a slowed "pace of success" is merely Orwellian gobbledygook meant to keep us in a losing endeavor, spilling more blood and treasure just to protect Bush's pride.

There are others (and I am among them) who consider that failure (and premature withdrawal) in Iraq would not only be a tragedy for the Iraqi people and for the world, but would not even accomplish the goals its proponents think it will. This enemy and this fight cannot be avoided, and failure in Iraq (however it's defined) will only set up the next, and greater conflict.

The question of "will" in this war is one I've tackled before (here, for example). Part of will is to consider that failure is not an option, and to do whatever needs to be done to make sure it does not occur. But without defining either, we are at sea, especially in the sort of murky situation presented by asymmetrical wars.

In World War II the goals were so obvious there was no real need to define victory: unconditional surrender of the enemy, nothing less. In Vietnam things became more foggy, and part of the shock of the Pentagon Papers was that the goals the American people had assumed were those of our war effort there were revealed to have not been taken all that seriously by the Pentagon. Post-Vietnam, goals have not only been poorly articulated, but in the current conflict they are inherently difficult to define--this enemy will never formally surrender.

[Part II, planned for tomorrow, will be an attempt to explain why victory has been especially difficult to define and to pursue in this particular war.]

[ADDENDUM: Shrinkwrapped on a related theme.]

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In the case of Pearl Harbor, that resolve lasted the duration of the war, an all-out conflagration that required far more sacrifice of the US (and the world) in money, comfort, and the all-important cost of human lives. The scale of such a loss is not even remotely comparable to that of our present conflict--at least, so far.

In addition, the first years of World War II featured many losses and much peril. It was a different world, however, and failure was not an option.

This Manchester Union Leader editorial in honor of Pearl Harbor makes the point that:

one does not win a war by fighting it with timidness and half-measures. We are on the verge of proving our attackers of five years ago right -- if they kill enough of us, we will lose our will to win.

The important part of that quote is "timidness and half-measures." Yes, our casualties in this war have been light compared to those of WWII. And yes, mistakes were made in both wars--and always will be. But it is impossible to remain politically correct and successfully wage an asymmetrical war against an enemy that uses terrorist tactics. If you're going to try to do that, you may as well not try, because every single life sacrificed to that cause will have been as though it were wasted.

The tactics of World War II don't fit today's war. I'm not suggesting heavy bombardment of civilian populations, for example. I've already made it clear what I would have preferred--an occupation with more teeth and more direction, and a firmer and less-PC hand to control the chaos at the outset.

But tactics aren't the issue. The issue is will. And, in that respect as in many others, current generations don't compare to the one known as "The Greatest Generation."

What will it take to fill us with the "terrible resolve" necessary? Because I sense this giant is only too happy to go back to sleep.

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From Wiki:

U.S. signals intelligence, through the Army's Signal Intelligence Service and the Office of Naval Intelligence's OP-20-G unit, had intercepted and decrypted considerable Japanese diplomatic and naval [citation needed] cipher traffic, though none of those decrypted carried significant tactical military information. Decryption and distribution of this intelligence was capricious and sporadic, and has been blamed on lack of manpower. At best, the information was fragmentary, contradictory, or insufficiently distributed. It was also incompletely understood by decision makers, and poorly unanalyzed. Nothing pointed directly to an attack at Pearl Harbor, and lack of awareness of the Imperial Navy's capabilities led to an underlying belief Pearl Harbor was safely out of harm's way. Only one Hawaiian message (6 December 1941), in a consular cipher, included mention of an attack on Pearl, and it was not decrypted until 8 December 1941.

I hadn't realized--although it stands to reason--that a good many casualties were from friendly fire. This is one of the sad and inevitable ironies of war:

Ninety minutes after it began, the attack was over. 2,403 Americans died (68 were civilians, many killed by American anti-aircraft shrapnel and shells landing in civilian areas, including Honolulu)...

My elderly mother was an adult at the time of Pearl Harbor. She'd always been interested in history (her major in college). Later, she often reminisced with me about historical events she'd lived through. In fact, her earliest memory was of booming guns going off in New York Harbor to celebrate the end of WWI--they frightened her, but the adults chuckled and told her not to fear, the war was over.

In fact, all war was over--it was "the war to end all wars." My mother recalled being taught in her early teens that her generation was the luckiest on earth. Why? because the Kellogg-Briand Pact had just outlawed war.

Well, that'll teach you to listen to your teachers. Because, of course, her generation faced World War II not all that many years later. And, because my mother lived to see 9/11, she was able to tell me that this would be worse than Pearl Harbor and World War II.

It remains to be seen whether she was correct. Both of us would like to think she wasn't.

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Of course, Saddam's enemies in Iraq had already learned that particular lesson the hard way--from bitter personal experience after the Gulf War, when they were encouraged to revolt against Saddam by the US, which then looked the other way when they were slaughtered. But Saddam wanted to remind them, complete with visuals, that this was a recurrent US pattern.

Tomorrow's election has been billed as a referendum on the Iraq war, and the Democrats feel poised to win. But they are divided and planless, with some fearing an early pullout in Iraq and others desiring one. The former probably have studied the bitter lessons of the end stages of the Vietnam War, while the latter probably consider those end stages to have been a victory for their side.

Here's an article describing the debacle of the end game in the Vietnam War. Worth noting: once the US had withdrawn its forces, the North Vietnamese correctly surmised that we hadn't the stomach to return, no matter what the provocation. So they decided they could violate the terms of the Paris (how apropos!) Accords with impunity. When they did just that, the US responded by doing essentially nothing, giving the de facto green light to the North's final offensive against the South.

In a fascinating although lengthy article by Nixon's former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, published about a year ago in Foreign Affairs, Laird writes:

Mine is not a rosy view of the Vietnam War. I didn't miss the fact that it was an ugly, mismanaged, tragic episode in U.S. history, with devastating loss of life for all sides. But there are those in our nation who...wait for opportunities to trot out the Vietnam demons whenever another armed intervention is threatened...

Vietnam gave the United States the reputation for not supporting its allies. The shame of Vietnam is not that we were there in the first place, but that we betrayed our ally in the end. It was Congress that turned its back on the promises of the Paris accord.

Laird supervised the slow withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, known as Vietnamization. It took four years. He makes it clear that it's not Congress that should be setting some sort of artificial timetable in such a process, it's the executive branch that should be responding to conditions in the field:

In those four years of Vietnamization, I never once publicly promised a troop number for withdrawal that I couldn't deliver. President Bush should move ahead with the same certainty. I also did not announce what our quantitative standards for readiness among the South Vietnamese troops were, just as Bush should not make public his specific standards for determining when Iraqi troops are ready to go it alone. In a report to Congress in July 2005, the Pentagon hinted that those measurable standards are in place. However, it would be a mistake for the president to rely solely on the numbers. Instead, his top commander in the field should have the final say on how many U.S. troops can come home, commensurate with the readiness of Iraqi forces.

Sounds reasonable to me. But I don't have confidence that a Democratic Congress won't try to force the issue and bring the troops home as soon as possible. After all, they may feel they won the election on that platform, and that their constituents demand it. As a USA Today article points out:

Bush has said repeatedly that he refuses to end the war according to an artificial timetable set by politicians in Washington, but if the polls are borne out in Tuesday's elections, the public will be setting timetables, and they will only accelerate if the situation inside Iraq continues to deteriorate.

This would be a tragedy of major proportions, both for the Iraqis, the US, and our reputation for staying the course. My hope is that, if the Democrats do win control of the House, enough of them will have learned all the lessons of Vietnam, including that of the bitter end:

Just days before his execution at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodian statesman Sirak Mitak penned a final note to the U.S. ambassador refusing his offer of evacuation.

"But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we all are born and must die one day. I have only committed this mistake in believing in you, the Americans."

[ADDENDUM: What those serving in Iraq think, according to the Washington Post.]

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Certain fathers--perhaps in some cases those very same sons of long ago--are rejecting children who enlist:

My brother is an Army Ranger in Afghanistan...His choice to join after 9/11 was not easy. He was one year away from graduating from ASU with a law degree, and he believed the nation needed another soldier more than it needed another lawyer. His choice did not come without consequences, though.

My brother told me that he can understand our father's reaction to the decision. They come from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

There are many tragedies in war, and one of them is this estrangement of the generations. Note that in this particular case, the son seems to have an unusually mature--you might almost say "liberal," in the generic sense of the word--reaction to the father.

[ADDENDUM: Austin Bay, whose radio request for responses from military members to John Kerry's recent gaffe led to the letter I've quoted in this post, has written an eloquent soliloquy on Kerry. Hint: Austin is not one of Kerry's biggest fans.]

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