In case you missed it, on 18 August 2010, the last American combat brigade left Iraq, signaling the end to the endless war in Iraq, or at least the official end to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Granted, this withdrawal represents a mixed success, but so far Iraq has not imploded, degenerated into civil war, or been invaded by any of its neighbors. For an effort described by defeatists as being a quagmire, a disaster, and a failure, it certainly seems like things have worked out in ways that don’t look much like any of those things.

Now, Iraq still has a chance to become a lot of things, but one of the interesting elements of what it will become is that it will happen because Iraqis decide they will, not because Americans forced them to. Isn’t that part of what we set out to do to begin with?

Sometimes, it seems, endless has a good ending.

DLH

My friend Chris linked to a interesting article over on Facebook about a sober anniversary that comes around every August 6: the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The author makes the point that, without that bomb and the one dropped on Nagasaki three days later, the defeat of Japan would have been achieved by a bloody invasion involving millions of American and Japanese casualties compared to the more than 200,000 dead from the bombs.

I do not deny that the use of atomic weapons to end the war with Japan was a shocking event that continues to resonate even today, nor do I deny that making that choice created decades-long consequences that very few people could have anticipated at the time, but I reject out of hand the moral revisionism practiced by far too many people today that claims that the actions undertaken 65 years ago today were wrong even if they achieved right results.

In order for anyone to make some sort of judgement, that person must ignore certain facts in favor of a narrowed view that takes into account only those facts that support their own world view. We are all guilty of that kind of relativism, no matter how hard we try, but the kind of relativism that settles on the idea that it was wrong to use atomic weapons even though they saved millions of lives is itself immoral.

War is a horrible and evil thing, yet any rational person can look at human history and realize, despite the best efforts of well intended people, war is sometimes inevitable. Once war happens, whatever its causes, the only moral way to prosecute it is to fight it by whatever means ends it most quickly. In the fight against the Japanese, using atomic weapons achieved that goal.

The end of the war against Japan is also a historical object lesson for our own time. Sometimes war is inevitable, no matter how well intended people might otherwise be. Once war happens, the only moral way to prosecute it is to fight by whatever means ends it most quickly. If we fail to do what needs to be done, we are no longer acting morally, and in doing so we lose whatever justification we might have had.

Imagine how different our view of the end of the war against Japan would be if today marked the first day of the invasion of the Japanese mainland. Now imagine how different our view of world events today may be if we fail to act with the same resolve.

DLH

The recent release of over 80,000* classified documents by the website WikiLeaks represents what is very likely the largest and most damaging public disclosure of protected information to the public in the history of espionage. The potential damage caused by this release will be incalculable in terms of lives lost, opportunities scuttled, and public perspective manipulated.

I know people who will cheer this compromise and who will shake their fists in an defiant “take that” toward their much reviled Bush administration straw man. They will claim that this release is a great triumph for truth over tyranny, and some will reveal their ignorance by going so far as to make wild claims that these documents prove we should abandon Afghanistan.

So blooms the age of the non-state actor.

The non-state actor is a force that, I believe, has heretofore been underestimated and almost ignored by governments and citizens until very recently. Now, the power of unifying forces like the internet and other forms of nearly instantaneous mass communication have given potency to individuals and groups and causes that were once limited to protests and terrorism.

Now it is possible for people of similar mindset and ideology to unite across political, geographical, and cultural barriers to drive forward agendas that were almost unthinkable a decade ago. These groups of unified ideologues can wield power disproportionate to their size and scope, threatening the well-being of millions while being few in number themselves.

In this WiliLeaks release, we see such power in action. Clearly, the website’s founder, Julian Assange, and his compatriots want something very similar to what al Qaeda and the Taliban want: to harm the United States and its ability to operate on the international stage enough that it allows them to advance their agendas unchecked. I do not claim that Assange or any of his fellows sympathize with al Qaeda, but in them they have found the convenient alliance of an enemy of an enemy.

And they have succeeded at their goal of damaging the ability of the United States to conduct military, political, and civil operations in Afghanistan and the nations surrounding it. They have successfully encumbered US operations there, have exposed foreign personnel to additional risk, and have handed new initiative to their allies.

In doing so, they have placed everyone who does not believe in their agenda at risk, regardless of ones polity or beliefs. They have emboldened those who seek to force their ideologies on others and have revealed new, powerful tools for the enforcement of their goals.

Yet far too few people will see this threat for what it is. Most will be oblivious to what has happened, some will simply ignore it, and a tragic few will cheer it and support more events like it. In all those reactions, we see the potential for the failure of the state and the hands of the non-state, a danger that almost no one is ready to face.

DLH

*Editors note: There seems to be some disagreement online about exactly how many documents WikiLeaks released. Some of this seems to be due to how the information is being classified as documents due to the nature of the communications involved. WikiLeaks claims 91,000, the Guardian (who published many of the documents) claims more than 90,000, but earlier reports, now redacted or corrected claimed a lower number. We can safely say it was a lot.

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