THE WAR ON TERRORISM IS GOING to be “a different kind of war,” we’re told over and over again by the administration and commentators. Are they right? To some degree, of course they are. Every war is different from the last one. World War I was different from anything before it, as was World War II. Korea and Vietnam were each unprecedented in American history, as was the Cold War in general, and as was the Gulf War. The world changes, and to succeed in war one has to adapt to new circumstances—political, military, and technological. But claims to novelty can be overstated, and misleading. And they can be rationalizations for not doing some hard things that have to be done, and that aren’t new. Thus, the constant repetition that this new war on terrorism will be, in the president’s words, “much broader than the battlefields and beachheads of the past” is misleading. It’s not as if World War II and the Cold War didn’t feature financial and legal efforts against our enemies, diplomacy aimed at winning support (tacit and open) and building coalitions, concerns about homeland defense, or the need for patience and resolve on the part of the American people. It’s also always been true that some victories have been won “outside of public view, in tragedies avoided and threats eliminated.” So what’s so new and different? Well, according to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, it’s that this time there won’t be “some sort of a massive attack or invasion. It’s a much more subtle, nuanced, difficult, shadowy set of problems.” In fact, “there’s not going to be a D-Day as such. . . . This is not something that begins with a significant event or ends with a significant event.” Do we really know this to be true? There was in fact a significant beginning to our current war—the attack of September 11, 2001—despite the fact that, as in all wars, there were precursor events and attacks. And in fact there may be one event that (more or less) significantly ends at least this stage of the war on terror. Precisely the unpredictability of this new war should diminish the certainty of our leaders that it won’t have characteristics that, at this point, they don’t want it to have. After all, we may ultimately need to launch a large invasion on the ground in Afghanistan to get bin Laden. We may need a massive attack on Iraq if Saddam is developing chemical or biological weapons. We don’t know at this stage. The administration would prefer, as would we all, that this war be fought on a smaller scale. But that may not be possible. And it would be irresponsible to rule out bigger, more “conventional” efforts if those are needed to win the war. What’s truly prudent now is not to pretend to know how this war is going to go. Wars are unpredictable. What’s prudent is not to assume that we can win it on the cheap, with only financial pressure and diplomacy and covert ops and air strikes. Sunday’s New York Times has an interesting article by Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker, headlined “Large U.S. Force Is Assembling As Bush Decides How To Strike.” What’s striking is in fact how small the force is—reflecting the appalling levels we allowed our military to drop to during the 1990s. We’ve increased our warplanes in the region from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea from about 200 to 300, with perhaps another 100 on the way, and have increased troop levels from about 20,000 to about 28,000. These increases are of course important—but we cannot yet know that they will be enough to do the job. All the confident talk now about how this war won’t require much manpower will not make it any easier for the administration if it needs to substantially increase defense spending and enlarge the force structure down the road. Everyone hopes we can win the war on terrorism without a large commitment of ground forces. But we don’t know that we can. The question invited by rhetoric about new kinds of war is this: If it takes more of the old-fashioned “conventional” kind of fighting to win than the administration hopes is the case, will we curtail our war aims, or do what is necessary to win it? The current rhetoric tempts our enemies to draw the wrong conclusion about our will to win. I am confident that, in fact, the United States will do what it takes. It would be better to prepare our people for this possibility now, and to warn our enemies of our resolution now, than to waste weeks and months falsely assuring ourselves that we know this war won’t require the kind of exertion that most victorious wars do end up requiring: Putting soldiers in large numbers, on the ground, in far off places, fighting and killing our enemies until they surrender. William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard.UPDATE: On October 4, 2001, Robert Novak reports in “GOP Hawks Misfire by Attacking Powell” that former president George H.W. Bush is “incredulous” and “upset” at William Kristol’s views on Colin Powell.
