One of Ours

...The lead-up to the war was contentious and, knowing what we know now, quite of few of the advocates of the war would have come down the other way. I suspect I would have, as I’ve always been skeptical of using the military for nation building. Indeed, I was very much a Realist on the war, rejecting the Administration’s arguments for it until roughly the time that North Korea announced that it had nuclear weapons. Ultimately, the prospect of a nuclear-armed and thus uncontainable Saddam pushed me into the pro-war camp.

On the other hand, I wonder how many wars that we now view as just would have met with popular approval in their midst. The U.S. Civil War, for example, would almost certainly not have been fought if Lincoln—let alone the public—had known ahead of time that over half a million would be killed and many times that maimed for life. The initial northern war aim of preserving the Union would certainly not have been deemed worth that price. The abolition of slavery, which became the war aim well into the conflict, has made it seem worthwhile in the hindsight of history, but that goal had much less popular support in the North than did Union.

Would we have fought World War I if we had known the cost ahead of time? Or that we’d have to fight it again thirty years later? How about Korea? Certainly, we’d have avoided Vietnam; a good thing in hindsight.

Indeed, World War II is the lone high cost war since the War for Independence that would likely have commanded popular support had the costs been known up front. And, indeed, I’m not sure WWII would survive this test had we not been attacked at Pearl Harbor. We were quite content to let Hitler have his way in Europe—participating only with materiel support—for quite a few years until Pearl Harbor gave Roosevelt the excuse he needed to send us to war.