How do you know he's wrong already?
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Well he's right in preliminaries and wrong in conclusion.
Correctly, he identifies the fact that the military defeats of the insurgencies he lists were, in many cases, political victories for the defeated. . Here he stands on solid ground. But things quickly take a turn towards the unreal:
many of these military defeats above were, for the guerrillas, political victories. The FLN took power in 1962, and Vietnamese communists imposed their tyranny upon a prostrate South in 1975. We must never forget that the primary cause of their triumph was the willful abdication of their enemies in the absence of absolute compulsion. Identifying and being conscious of the psychological and social factors that transformed victory into defeat in these prior cases is a necessary first step toward inoculating the American public from such failings in this one.
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What else is this except a call for a steeling of the will, a stiffening of the back?
He continues:
Don't think it's not necessary: I can easily go to dKos or any one of a multitude of other sites -- including comments on this one -- and give you ample examples of hand-wringing and anguish over American war crimes, or massacres of Iraqi civilians, or calls for outright appeasement, or declarations of our inevitable defeat. These things bear little relationship to reality; what's pernicious about them, though, is that they can become reality -- self-fulfilling prophecies of failure and shame. This is the flip side of the mindless, stupid pro-war cheerleading that so often goes on (and frequently accuses me of "losing my nerve," or worse, when I discuss malign developments): but at least that has the virtue of optimism, and some grasp, however tenuous, of our fundamental power as a nation and a moral force. The defeatism, the reflexive pessimism, is altogether more dangerous.
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We must be unafraid of victory to achieve it. Perhaps even massacres and other 'unpleasantness' will be required but this is the price WE must pay to accomplish our national mission.
Judging the tiger by its claws I'd say 'Tacitus' is quite thoroughly wrong in the worst way one can be. Indeed, we should hope he's wrong because if the Spartan-ized America he dreams of (the real focus of his post) comes to pass...
DRM