We need a new paradigm for fighting wars…or we need to stop fighting.

(A layman’s guide to world peace)

We humans have been fighting each other since the dawn of civilization. Fighting and war are ingrained into our DNA. We are a fine tuned fighting machine and are overjoyed when we get the opportunity to show our prowess at work.

Of course, over the centuries, the methods of fighting have changed dramatically. The weapons of war have become highly sophisticated and increasingly lethal.

Throughout most of human history, we were barbaric in our approach. It was always kill or be killed. Stand up and fight or lie down and die.

There have been a few exceptions. The English and Greeks come to mind as civilizations which tried to elevate the art of war to a gentlemanly pursuit. Even in the middle ages, the Celtic peoples attempted to conduct their battles between rival tribes in a civil fashion.

However, for the most part, the barbarians of the world were the victors. The barbaric Germanic tribes brought down the great Roman Empire. The Normans brought down the English in 1066.

But, in the most of these battles, the victors often assimilated themselves into the culture they conquered. As a result, many wars of conquest in reality became a way for feuding cultures to evolve into better societies by this amalgamation of philosophies.

In some cases, the conquerors decided that after total and undeniable military victory and several years of occupation, changing world events and priorities dictated that the best path was a unilateral withdrawal. An example of this is the English withdrawal from India in the twentieth century.

The main point of this short history lesson is to document the idea that when battles are won militarily, most peoples accept defeat and face up to the consequences of their losses on the battlefield. Of course, this acceptance sometimes comes over a long period of time. The American Civil War is a prime example of the reluctance of the loser to accept defeat.

But, in the early stages of the twenty first century, we have a new paradigm which has developed. Today, the victors don’t know how to gracefully withdraw after military victory and the vanquished don’t know how to gracefully accept military defeat and adapt to the dark consequences of their military ineffectiveness.

The United States has won a resounding military victory in Iraq. There is no doubt about the victor on the battlefield. In military terms and parlance, Mission Accomplished.

The Islamic terrorist cult has decided to resist this military victory in Iraq by continuously disrupting the healing process which the Americans are attempting to implement.

So, what should be our next step? The war on terror is obviously a long slog, and we cannot give in to the fundamentalist terrorists. We will not be defeated in the long term. But, short term, what should be our modus operandi? How can we extricate ourselves from Iraq?

First of all, we need to give the Iraqi government an ultimatum. Either they sift through their problems and come up with a workable scheme and implement it before the end of this year or we’ll unilaterally divide Iraq into three separate states and then leave them to their own devices to divvy up the spoils. This action will probably result in a sectarian war, but so be it. The Iraqis need to understand that a country has fleeting opportunities to become a successful entity on the world’s stage. This is the time when the Iraqis need to seize the opportunity.

We are now in a world wide war on terror. We cannot use all of our military might in an attempt to build or rebuild nations to our liking. However, we can use diplomatic and economic incentives to attempt to create a peaceful world order.

We must come down hard on our enemies. We must attack vociferously when we as a nation or our friends in the international community are challenged militarily.

But, the main philosophy that we must now adhere to is the mandate that we shall never again attempt to militarily rebuild any foreign nation to conform to our ideas of democracy and freedom. The countries who threaten us militarily must be met with overwhelming military might. Then, we must grant the conquered a finite amount of time to attempt to rebuild their nation before we withdraw our military troops and communicate only on the diplomatic and economic fronts.

The victors in past wars before the twentieth century assumed military and political control of the country they conquered. We, as a western culture, don’t practice that principle any more. We attempt to democratize the countries we defeat on the battlefield.

We need to ditch that philosophy. We need to defeat the military enemy on the battlefield and win their hearts and minds in the boardroom.

To those who say that withdrawing our troops from Iraq before the country is democratized completely is a defeat for the United States, I say that we won the Iraqi war on the military battlefield and gave the Iraqis ample opportunity to form a democratic nation. The Iraqis as a people must decide not to waste their opportunity. Their time will quickly pass. We will soon need to move on to other priorities.

To those who say that the Iraqi people are no better off now than they were before the war, I say that the fight for freedom is a noble pursuit and that the brave Iraqis who gave their lives in this fight will be remembered someday as heroes and the first generation of freedom fighters. The Iraqi people must remember that if a man’s life is quelled in the fight for freedom, that man is a hero.