Genghis Khan was a charismatic and fearsome figure. He and his armies were known for their cruelty and barbarity, and the sight of them advancing across the battlefield in a storm of dust, the earth shaking with the thunder of 50,000 hooves, was enough to send enemies into retreat. The thought alone of this terrible, bloodthirsty, and mighty warrior was enough to rout enemy armies. Genghis Khan was a man of absolute will and power, a frightening presence of power and vengeance. He was a horseman of the Apocalypse.
There have been many successful armies in the world. Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, Pompey the Great, and Marcus Agrippa were as brilliant generals as Genghis Khan, and brought Roman organization, discipline, and management to the battle. They won because of superior ability, armaments, and military thinking; yet it was Genghis Khan who, with an almost untamed savagery, conquered the world. At its height the Mongol Empire extended from far eastern China to the Danube, the biggest empire the world has ever seen.
Khan had no qualms, moral reservations, or ethical hesitancy. Wars were for winning, civilians were complicit enemies, and total annihilation of any opposition was his modus belli. Not only would defeated populations be without the wherewithal to mount a resistance or counterattack, they would never dare to incite the bloody, murderous, savage wrath of the conqueror.
The same spirit of total conquest inspired Harry Truman at the end of World War II when he dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events which would bring the Japanese to surrender and would send the Soviets an unmistakable message - 'You're next'.
Wars were for winning, civilian populations were not collateral damage but complicit in their nations' politics. The firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo as well as the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima caused tens of thousands of civilian lives but contributed to the final, total victory of the Allies over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Something happened to American resolve after the war, and in Korea stalemate was the result. Despite the pleas of General MacArthur to march into China, North Korea's patron and growing Communist power, and to decisively end the Korean War in America's favor, Truman fired him and kept American troops in place. The result was an emboldened North Korea, a rogue nuclear power and a constant threat to its neighbors, the US, and South Korea.
Things got worse in Vietnam during America's war with Ho Chi Minh, General Giap, and the North. President Johnson's policy of 'Win Hearts and Minds', designed to win the Viet Cong and its South Vietnamese supporters to the American cause was a complete failure. The Viet Cong also fought to win over South Vietnamese villagers to their cause, but did so with brutality, intimidation, and horror and did so successfully.
Much later in the Second Iraq War when after a successful invasion of Baghdad and the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein, President George Bush declared victory and withdrew his troops, leaving the door open for radical Islamic militias to assume power. Bush was convinced that the Iraqi people would assure that the country would transition seamlessly from dictatorship to liberal democracy.
His generals advisors counseled military rule - a severe, uncompromising period of total control and elimination of anti-American, Islamist, and anti-democratic forces - but Bush declined. 'The people are now free to decide'.
Bush's war in Afghanistan against the Taliban was no different. He held back on policies of total victory, hoped for carrot-and-stick diplomacy and measured military action, totally misjudged the will, determination and guerilla mentality of the enemy, and left the country to them.
In the current America-Iran war, President Trump began the campaign with decisive miliary strikes which killed the Ayatollah and his inner circle of advisors and dealt a serious blow to Iran's military infrastructure; but after what looked like an easy military victory, the President - eyeing the coming mid-term elections at home and the country's hope for a peaceful end to the war - began negotiations. The Iranians, of course, more militarily able than the President thought and in possession of tens of thousands of drones and a seemingly limitless supply of missiles, took advantage of he hiatus and began to rebuild, rearm, and deploy.
Trump signed a conditional peace treaty which the Iranians ignored, and is now threatening massive retaliation. Given America's hearts-and-minds record, it is doubtful.
General Curtis Lemay, Vice Presidential candidate for a third party during the 1968 American presidential election said of the North Vietnamese enemy, 'Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age' which of course neither Republican nor Democrat candidates could endorse; but in the end, Lemay was just as right as Truman was in World War II - immeasurable power and destruction will bring any war to a quick end.
In Ridley Scott's movie Gladiator the Russell Crowe character, general of the Northern Armies, says before his forces attack the barbarians in the forests beyond, 'Unleash hell'. A great barrage of slings of fiery oil, a rain of punishing arrows, the advance of armed phalanxes, and the attack of armed cavalry followed. Hell was indeed unleashed, and the barbarians, the last enemy of the Roman Empire, were defeated.
General William Tecumseh Sherman knew that his Union forces were superior and would eventually and ultimately prevail, over the Confederate South in the American Civil War, but he understood complete and total military conquest was the only victory which would assure that the South would never rise again.
His goal was to humiliate the South – to show its people that the heralded aristocratic Cavalier was nothing compared to the tough and gritty farm boys from the North; that its leaders were inept and incapable of stopping the Union advances. His brutal trail of destruction and devastation as he marched through Georgia to the sea and his punitive march up through the Carolinas made it abundantly clear - The days of the Confederacy were over, done with, and consigned to history.
Sherman understood – like the Israelis in their war against Hamas – that complete military victory would not only destroy enemy military capacity but would destroy the will of the enemy and its civilian population.
Sherman said, “War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, so let’s give them what they want.” Sherman understood that such complete capitulation could only be achieved if he “traversed holy ground” and captured cities which were symbols of the Confederacy and what people were led to believe was Southern supremacy; and if they were easily taken or destroyed, the will of the people would be further eroded.
Sherman was very clear about his march through the Carolinas. He knew that the journey would be arduous and physically demanding; but he wanted to burn a trail through the very heart of the Confederacy – the place where the rebellion had started – to show the South once and for all that not only had their armies been beaten, but that their whole culture had been destroyed.
A total, annihilating war against Iran would mean thousands of civilian casualties, among whom are thousands who protested in the streets and demanded an end to the theocratic regime. Yet just as in Nazi Germany and Japan, the complicity of the Iranian people - or at least its complaisance - has contributed to the persistence and longevity of the regime. Total victory would send the same unequivocal lesson to the Iranian people that Israel sent to Gazans and that Truman sent to Japan - never again will you ever dare to repeat the errors of the past.
For terrorist regimes like Iran and its clients - ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah, the death of civilians, has no relevance since the ends of battle are religious and spiritual. The ends justify the means far more than any secular struggle. What Americans consider heinous crimes – blowing up school buses, crowded markets, and residential neighborhoods – have no moral implication per se. They are only necessary measures to assure the final and ultimate moral end.
In this war with Iran, the United States' ally is Israel, the only country that has understood the dangerous, aggressive militancy of Islam, and they fight with the same moral rectitude and purpose as their radical Islamic opponents. They will brook absolutely no threat to the Jewish homeland, and civilian Palestinian and Iranian deaths are the price the enemy must pay for its aggression and permanent hostility. The Israelis know that they are fighting an enemy who uses a territorial imperative – a Palestinian state and the creation of an Islamic caliphate – only as pretext for the annihilation of Israel, the ridding of Arab lands of the infidel, and in preparation for universal Islamic rule.
Under these circumstances, total, uncompassionate war is completely justified.
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