What if the impossible were to occur?

I’ve been trying to make the point for a long time that our views about warfare seem to have shifted since World War II. Pluck a person from 100 years ago, transport him to 2003, show him what occurred in Iraq - U.S. Army invades, occupies the capital, captures Iraq’s leader - and he would have said “ah yes, I see, there was a war and the U.S. won”.

But most modern people - especially enlightened, educated, beautiful people - don’t think the U.S. won the war. They still don’t think so, even today.

This goes hand in hand with a widely-held attitude that, if taken seriously, usually implies that winning a war isn’t even possible - at least for Western countries. (I think if two, say, African countries fight, one of them is allowed to win.) According to some sort of unwritten rule, you almost always have to put the word “winning” in quotes because “winning” isn’t possible. We see this attitude most frequently in reactions to whatever is the latest event or skirmish in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Intelligentsia opinion may be varied and conflicting but one thing all enlightened people seem to agree on is that it’s impossible for Israel to “win”. Indeed, discussion seems to proceed as a starting point from the assumption that, whatever happens, Israel won’t “win” at the end of it, and so when the pointless violence ebbs, and the smoke temporarily clears, there were still be a conflict to resolve (i.e. for enlightened Westerners to resolve, using the same brilliant techniques that have been working so well for the past 40 years). And Israel will still need to make concessions, of course.

But today Israel and Hamastan are at war, and although the outcome is uncertain and I can’t claim to have followed it all that closely, Israel appears to be doing pretty well. And it’s lasting a bit longer than the usual minor, ineffectual wars we see over there. This got me to thinking - could Israel be trying to actually (gulp) win, this time? Is that possible? And what would that even look like? And if it happened, would Western intelligentsia heads explode?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. But I do know that “win-is-always-in-quotes” is a lefty fantasy that is long past due for a cold hard encounter with reality. And I can think of few countries I’d enjoy seeing deliver that reality besides Israel.

(Originally posted at RWCG)