LECTURA DEL DÍA: Stephen Green (de Vodkapundit), en Tech Central Station:

Before 9/11, we almost always knew how to end a war.

The Civil War? Beat the CSA on the field, and occupy all the choice bits of the South. The First World War? March on to Berlin. Of course, the Germans called it quits before we got anywhere near Berlin, so WWI never quite ended for the Germans. Which, naturally, brings us to the Second World War -- Occupy Berlin and Tokyo, and it's game over, man.

Nuclear weapons and our first-ever defensive alliances complicated matters after 1945. Did we win in Korea, by simply holding the line? Or should victory have been defined as reuniting all of Korea? Or, since the Chinese proved to be our real foe, should victory have meant deposing the Chinese Communists?

Then there's Vietnam, which was Korea writ on a much larger scale. We won the battles, as everyone knows, but we lost the war. Or did we? Vietnam was a campaign in the larger Cold War. Sure, we lost South Vietnam, but we still won the larger war. Was Vietnam a win? A loss? A tragic necessity? All of the above?

If you think war has become complicated, peace is messier still.

Nobody ever knows what the peace will look like. At Fort Sumter, who could have predicted the KKK, Jim Crow, or Radical Reconstruction? Who knew in August, 1914 that the European War would result in 20 million deaths, Russian Communism, or Nazi Germany? If you can find me the words of some prophet detailing, in 1940, the UN, the Cold War, or even the complete assimilation of western Germany into Western Europe. . . then I'll print this essay on some very heavy paper, and eat it. With aluminum foil as a garnish.

It simply isn't possible to plan for the peace. "No peace plan survives the last battle" is Green's Corollary to von Moltke's dictum that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

So then -- how do we win this Terror War, and what will the peace look like?

Y a continuación da sus respuestas. ¡Venga, a leer!