Brutality alone doesn’t win wars

Baltimore Sun Letter to the Editor August 14, 2005.

Gregory Kane’s thesis that “brutal tactics make the enemy quit” is counterfactual (“Hey, Mr. President: War is all about the brutality,” Aug. 6). Does he believe, for instance, that the United States was more brutal than the Nazis during World War II?

And if brutality really decides the outcome of wars, how does Mr. Kane explain the U.S. defeat in Vietnam even after we killed millions of soldiers and civilians?

More perplexing is Mr. Kane’s advice that President Bush be more brutal in Iraq to win the war, while simultaneously reminding Mr. Bush that the French experience in Algeria demonstrates the “futility of occupying Iraq.“

I suspect it is muddle-headed thinking like this on the part of the Bush administration that got us into the Iraq debacle.

What we need now is creativity and compassion in order to get us out of Iraq.

Dave Goldsmith
Woodstock