by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n In a recent review of Donald Kagan\u2019s\u00a0The Peloponnesian War<\/i>, and my\u00a0Autumn of War<\/i>, (“Theatres of War:\u00a0 Why the battles over ancient Athens still rage\u201d\u00a0New Yorker<\/i>\u00a0Magazine<\/i>, [January 12, 2004]), the classicist Daniel Mendelsohn\u00a0 says that I believe that it is immoral to suggest defeat can be seen as victory: “The play asks the very question that Victor Davis Hanson considers “immoral”: whether abject defeat can yet somehow be a victory.”<\/p>\n Apparently, I am supposed to believe some strange idea that when armies win and someone says they lost, it is immoral. And to support Mendelsohn incoherent contention he offers a direct quote from my\u00a0Carnage and Culture.<\/i>Here\u2019s what he offers.<\/p>\n There is an inherent truth of battle. It is hard to disguise the verdict of the battlefield, and nearly impossible to explain away the dead, or to suggest that abject defeat is somehow victory. . . . To speak of war in any other fashion brings with it a sort of immorality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Always beware of those little dots when someone has an ax to grind. So note very carefully the grammatical gymnastics that Mendelsohn must use to distort what is actually in the text of\u00a0Carnage and Culture<\/i>.<\/p>\n The sentence, “To speak of war in any other fashion brings with it a sort of immorality” is most certainly\u00a0not<\/i>, as Mendelsohn wants to suggest in his rendention, the summary of “to suggest that abject defeat is somehow victory.”\u2014but of several sentences immediately prior that Mendelsohn must deliberately omit to obtain his strange meaning.<\/p>\n So here’s what I wrote (the italics are what Mendelsohn chose to cobble together):<\/p>\n There is an inherent truth of battle. It is hard to disguise the verdict of the battlefield, and nearly impossible to explain away the dead, or to suggest that abject defeat is somehow victory<\/i>.\u00a0 Wars are the sum of battles, battles the tally of individual human beings killing and dying. As observers as diverse as Aldous Huxley and John Keegan have pointed out, to write of conflict is not to describe merely the superior rifles of imperial troops or the matchless edge of the Roman\u00a0gladius<\/i>, but ultimately the collision of a machine-gun bullet with the brow of an adolescent, or the carving and ripping of artery and organ in the belly of an anonymous Gaul.\u00a0To speak of war in any other fashion brings with it a sort of immorality<\/i>: the idea when hit, soldiers simply go to sleep rather than are shredded, that generals order impersonal battalions and companies of automations into the heat of battle, rather than screaming nineteen-year-olds into clouds of gas and sheets of lead bullets, or that a putrid corpse has little to do with larger approaches to science and culture.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Mendelsohn has cut out most of the paragraph,\u00a0 and then made a complete sentence out of a phrase that ended in a colon that specifies exactly what I meant by the use of “any other fashion.”\u00a0 The reader knows\u00a0 my use of “immorality” refers,\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0to Mendelsohn’s “whether abject defeat can yet somehow be a victory,” but rather clearly to the idea that military historians owe it to their discipline to talk of the carnage that war brings to the poor men who must fight it.<\/p>\n But had the \u2018moralist\u2019 Mendelsohn quoted what I actually wrote, then he could not have immediately followed the misrepresentation\u00a0 so easily with the quip:<\/p>\n And yet the Greeks themselves-not least Thucydides-did speak of war in these other ways. In fact, it is Hanson and Kagan who strip away the moral meaning that underpins Thucydides’ account of the war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Some moralist, this fellow Mendelsohn, who can \u2018strip\u2019 away all meaning through scissors, paste, and creative\u00a0 punctuation\u2014and\u00a0 then find it published in the\u00a0New Yorker<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers In a recent review of Donald Kagan\u2019s\u00a0The Peloponnesian War, and my\u00a0Autumn of War, (“Theatres of War:\u00a0 Why the battles over ancient Athens still rage\u201d\u00a0New Yorker\u00a0Magazine, [January 12, 2004]), the classicist Daniel Mendelsohn\u00a0 says that I believe that it is immoral to suggest defeat can be seen as victory: “The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[804],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1f0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4589,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-perfect-storm-of-hating-bush-part-ii\/","url_meta":{"origin":4774,"position":0},"title":"The Perfect Storm of Hating Bush: Part II","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 30, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson This is the second of four parts written for\u00a0Private Papers. Part Two Why the new hysterical hatred? There are a variety of ways to account for this unhinged hatred detailed in \u201cThe new candor about killing George Bush.\u201d Al Gore won the popular vote in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2004"","block_context":{"text":"September 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/september-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6362,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-on-the-savior-generals\/","url_meta":{"origin":4774,"position":1},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson on the ‘Savior Generals","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Paul Schnee \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, former classics professor, scholar of ancient warfare, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and the author of some 20 books. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review and is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Literature"","block_context":{"text":"Literature","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/literature\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4556,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-historical-record-on-afghanistan-and-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":4774,"position":2},"title":"The Historical Record on Afghanistan and Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 30, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"What will be remembered? by Victor Davis Hanson San Francisco Chronicle In the present chaos in Iraq, of course, the war's purpose and outcome seem clouded. But in five years, if we persevere, there will be a stable consensual government, and then both Iraq and Afghanistan will properly be seen\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2004"","block_context":{"text":"April 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/april-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10815,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/axis-powers-miscalculated-after-early-advantages-in-world-war-ii-stanford-scholar-says\/","url_meta":{"origin":4774,"position":3},"title":"Axis powers miscalculated after early advantages in World War II, Stanford scholar says","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Axis powers miscalculated after early advantages in World War II, Stanford scholar says By 1942, the Axis powers seemed invincible. But the course of the war soon changed in ways that offer lessons for the U.S. and its allies in today\u2019s world, said Victor Davis Hanson, a Hoover Institution\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "War"","block_context":{"text":"War","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com\/stanford.ucomm.newsms.media\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/11124855\/ww2_istock-795x530.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10758,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/uncommon-knowledge-part-i-the-second-world-wars-with-victor-davis-hanson\/","url_meta":{"origin":4774,"position":4},"title":"Uncommon Knowledge Part I: The Second World Wars with Victor Davis Hanson","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EUELed7UuDQ How were the Axis powers able to instigate the most lethal conflict in human history? Find out in part one of this episode as Victor Davis Hanson, joins Peter Robinson on\u00a0Uncommon Knowledge to discuss his latest book,\u00a0The Second World Wars. Victor Davis Hanson explains how World War II\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/EUELed7UuDQ\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1699,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-on-war-and-history\/","url_meta":{"origin":4774,"position":5},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson on War and History","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson Video Transcript","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4775,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4774\/revisions\/4775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}