Do We Have What It Takes?

John Derbyshire points out John Podhoretz's must read column today.

July 25, 2006 -- WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?

Derbyshire seconds Podhoretz with this quote of George Orwell written well before World War 2 began:

"You cannot be objective about an aerial torpedo. And the horror we feel of these things has led to this conclusion: if someone drops a bomb on your mother, go and drop two bombs on his mother. The only apparent alternatives are to smash dwelling houses to powder, blow out human entrails and burn holes in children with thermite, or to be enslaved by people who are more ready to do these things than you are yourself; as yet no one has suggested a practicable way out."

—George Orwell, reviewing Arthur Koestler's Spanish Testament for the magazine Time and Tide, Feb. 5, 1938.

It is what we have always been up against, not the means or numbers, but the will to win.