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George Santayana remarked upon hearing of "the War to end all war," that "only the dead shall know the end of war." Likewise, only the dead will know the peace of appeasement.
It's a foolish assumption to think that people fight for a cause. They fight for be-cause. It's as foolish to think that the West wages war for profits, for oil, as it is to think the West has fought for cotton or coal. In past times people likely could not have dreamed of economies without coal or without cotton. So it will be with oil. And profit. All things pass but the essential, and an essential is war. If we had too we'd fight for something to fight about. Oil is nothing to war. And we cannot renege on our essence for the sake of oil; we cannot allow our leaders to play dhimmi to the sheiks and barbarians for the sake of oil. If we need it to live our lives then we must by main force take the oil we need. But more importantly, if we need war we must make it in spite of our leaders' pitiful attempts to keep the oil flows moving. We are under attack by a movement of people who are in closer touch with their essence than we insulated from ourselves by comfort and the goods of oil. The best use for oil is boiling it to pour it on our enemies. Our economic need for oil shouldn't stop us, nor stop our leaders from war. No peace for oil.
We've argued here for the need to make a Melian Dialogue with our enemies. It's the real world of real living. We have further argued that it will take men of a variety we seldom acknowledge today to make good work of a hard job. It will take men like William Walker and the Immortals. We have argued that it is unimportant to consider the past conventions of the Treaty of Westphalia. Nations as concepts are past their due date. It's time for the triumph of Modernity. And so on it goes. Below we have some quotations on war according to Carl von Clausewitz. We follow them with a link to Carlos Marighella, Minimanual for the Urban Guerrilla.
We have argued here that our "War on Terror" is a war against fascist Islam and Counter-Enlightenment Left dhimmi fascism. Like it or not war is the lot of Man. We argue that it is our privilege to wage war for Modernity. If perchance we win this war, then we might bequeath to our grandchildren a world with less war than today. But if we fail, then there will be nothing but death and slavery for all forever. There's no middle course. So we leave it to clausewitz for now, and to you:
- Theory becomes infinitely more difficult as soon as it touches the realm of moral values.
CLAUSEWITZ, ON WAR
(From the Michael Howard/Peter Paret translation, Princeton University Press, 1976/84, based on the original in German, Vom Kriege, Dummlers Verlag, Berlin, 1832.)
- Earlier theorists aimed to equip the conduct of war with principles, rules, or even systems, and thus considered only factors that could be mathematically calculated (e.g., numerical superiority; supply; the base; interior lines). All these attempts are objectionable, however, because they aim at fixed values. In war everything is uncertain and variable, intertwined with psychological forces and effects, and the product of a continuous interaction of opposites.
- "What do we mean by the defeat of the enemy? Simply the destruction of his forces, whether by death, injury, or any other means -- either completely or enough to make him stop fighting. . . . The complete or partial destruction of the enemy must be regarded as the sole object of all engagements. . . . Direct annihilation of the enemy's forces must always be the dominant consideration."
- "No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it."
- The aim of war should be the defeat of the enemy. But what constitutes defeat? The conquest of his whole territory is not always necessary, and total occupation of his territory may not be enough.
- "The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking."
"Inability to carry on the struggle can, in practice, be replaced by two other grounds for making peace: the first is the improbability of victory; the second is its unacceptable cost."
We may demonstrate to the enemy the improbability of his victory by: obtaining a single victory; by seizing a province; or by conducting operations to produce direct political repercussions.
We may demonstrate to the enemy the unacceptable cost of his struggle by: invading his territory; conducting operations to increase his suffering; or by wearing down the enemy.
There is only one means in war: combat.
"When we speak of destroying the enemy's forces we must emphasize that nothing obliges us to limit this idea to physical forces: the moral element must also be considered."
"If we do not learn to regard a war, and the separate campaigns of which it is composed, as a chain of linked engagements each leading to the next, but instead succumb to the idea that the capture of certain geographical points or the seizure of undefended provinces are of value in themselves, we are liable to regard them as windfall profits."http://www.clausewitz.com
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