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50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Re: Publishers Weekly's Blurb, April 5, 2010
This review is from: Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Hardcover)
Publishers Weekly writes many short blurbs for Amazon. And they usually do a great job. Unfortunately, their assertion that Lewis veers close to arguing that "might makes right" is completely wrong. Consider Lewis's take on the Third Punic War--which he says was not a war at all but rather a massacre:
"Rome was wrong; the peace of Scipio Africanus was good, and the Romans could have preserved it by just mediation of the Carthaginian complaints. The Romans appointed a successor to Masinissa in 149; they could have ended the Numidian attacks. It is to Romans' eternal shame--there is no credit due here--that they slaughtered a former enemy that had accepted peace and was living by its word.
"Readers tempted to interpret the thesis of this book as the need for total destruction of an enemy's population centers should consider the decades that followed the Second Punic War, when former enemies were at peace, with the needless sacrifice of that peace in the destruction of Carthage--and the civil unrest and violence that followed in the next generation for the Romans. . . .
"The Second Punic War remains the example of a successful victory," says Lewis at chapter's end. The Third was "a needless and unforgiveable slaughter."
The idea that "might makes right" is nowhere in the above. Nor is it to be found elsewhere in the book. Lewis in fact explicitly states that the opposite is true. After showing how the "relative commitment of each side to its moral cause . . . affected the outcome of [each] conflict," Lewis says that something more than just commitment is involved. "The truth," according to Lewis, "matters"--"the strongest power belonged to those who were, in fact, right, if those who were right knew it."
"This may be unfashionable to say today--in an intellectual climate that sunders fact and value, and understands moral claims as inherently contested matters of opinion--but it remains a demonstrable fact that the Spartan and Confederate slave systems were morally debased and that the freedom upheld by the Thebans and the Union was good.
"The political autonomy upheld by the Greeks, as well as the political relationships between Rome and its Italian allies, was superior to the alternatives presented by Persia and Carthage. Certainly, the war between America and Japan in 1945 was not fought over morally equivalent options--not if peace and prosperity for millions of people are valued.
"The tragedy of Munich is in the failure of the British to recognize that their own moral norms could become weapons when manipulated by a vicious dictator. The British and the Americans--like the Greeks--became truly unbeatable when they grasped how right they really were. As the war progressed, public exposure of the enemy's actions strengthened the victor's knowledge of its own moral rectitude and discredited their former enemies' failed policies in their own eyes."
The overall lesson of Lewis's book is to take ideas seriously, especially moral ideas. Those interested in how such ideas have influenced history will enjoy this clearly-written and often-engrossing book. But they should not look forward to or reject it on the grounds that it supports a "might makes right" viewpoint. It does not. And hopefully this review--or "response" to be correct--shows that.
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25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A tour de force of military history viewed via the importance of moral ideas, March 24, 2010
This review is from: Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Hardcover)
John David Lewis takes the reader through the important steps of six separate wars in ancient and modern times ranging from the Greeks and Romans to the U.S. Civil War and World War II. In each case he illustrates in detail the importance of moral ideas as the necessary motivating factors in a decisive defeat of an enemy. Only a consistent, principled commitment to the rightness of one's cause and therefore a willingness to take the fight to the "center of gravity" of the enemy will result in the enemy's permanent surrender. The rightness of one's cause should not be arbitrary but be based on a rational, fact-based recognition of the moral superiority of one's civilization. Highly recommended!
One hopes that today and tomorrow's policy makers will read this book as well as Elan Journo's Winning the Unwinnable War: America's Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The moral case for seeking victory in war and projecting power, August 4, 2010
This review is from: Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Hardcover)
Dr. Lewis ought to be teaching military history at our war colleges. America would be invincible then and actually win wars, which we have not done since WWII.
In his book 'Nothing less than victory: Decisive Wars and the lessons of history', Dr, Lewis shows the concrete 'cases' of six wars in history, from ancient times to modern times, and analyzes how in each war only the true breaking of the will of the citizens behind the war, so not of the soldiers, lead to a permanent end of the hostile attitude of all those who initiated the wars.
Dr. Lewis shows, amongst others, how we failed to win WWI because we did not defeat the Germans truly by making them feel directly the horror of their own choices to commit war. No German territory nor civilians were attacked nor was Germany made to capitulate unconditionally in WWI. So the whole thing had to be revisited in WWII and, after initial attempts to appease the unappeasables, we finally figured out that only vanquishing our enemies unconditionally would end their irrationality. And we did.
Of course the great successful war leaders like Scipio and Sherman and their victories were also discussed as examples to show how to wage a war against an attacking enemy rightly and victoriously.
"Nothing Less Than Victory' shows us here that it is morally right, so in our selfish interest, to unconditionally defeat the enemies who attack us, and to do so brutally, without recoiling at hitting civilians, like we do now, that those enemies will not think of doing so again. His premise is that behind each war there are the civilians who either initiated and support it or just support it and, if they are stopped, the soldiers cannot continue.
I wonder why Dr. Lewis left out General Patton's 'Shermanesque' approach to war. He seems to have been the only general who truly understood the need for absolutely defeating Germany and asap. Eisenhower certainly did not.
Dr. Lewis book also makes one think of a projection towards the future of all 'unfinished wars' which we Americans still have in our portfolio. The most important unfinished war being that we did not defeat China unconditionally in the Korean war, as General Douglas McArthur wanted, and we never defeated Russia, and both undefeated enemies are coming back to bite us now, probably together in one war.
If you care about your life in our country, donate this book to all our war colleges, so future officers get well armed intellectually, and give it also to any politicians, educators and intellectuals involved in the defense of our country.
Dr. Lewis' book is a powerful 'weapon', arming all amongst us who are rational to defend ourselves best in future wars initiated by irrational enemies.
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