WAR PERCEPTIONS

Daniel Pipes has an interesting commentary Strange Logic in the Lebanon War, in which he points out that throughout the annals of history while wars were fought, each side wanted to portray their power, their tenacity, and their ferociousness, in order to intimidate the other side. They wanted to show the death and destruction that they had mightily inflicted upon their enemy.

Not so today.

Now we want to show our failures. We want to show the damage done to us, illustrating our inability to wage an effective war or our inability to protect our own citizens. And he asks, "Why have combatants (and their media allies) now reversed this age-old and universal pattern, downplaying their own prowess and promoting the enemy's?"

Is it because of the "unprecedented power enjoyed by the United States and its allies?"

Pipes writes,

"As the historian Paul Kennedy explained in 2002, "in military terms there is only one player on the field that counts." Looking back in time, he finds, "Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing." And Israel, both as a regional power in its own right and as a close ally of Washington, enjoys a parallel preponderance vis-a-vis Hizbullah.

Such power implies that, when West fights non-West, the outcome on the battlefield is a given. That settled in advance, the fighting is seen more like a police raid than traditional warfare. As in a police raid, modern wars are judged by their legality, the duration of hostilities, the proportionality of force, the severity of casualties, and the extent of economic and environmental damage.

An interesting take. Full commentary.