| |   Victor Davis Hanson & Ilario Pantano
If anyone is interested in reading reasonable books on the military, I can recommend Victor Davis Hanson's Why the West has Won and Ilario Pantano's Warlord, No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy. Hanson is a classicist whose book analyzes the major battles of Western history from Greece to Modernity. Pantano is a Marine who was acquitted of trumped up murder charges brought against him by a disgruntled fellow soldier in Iraq. Hanson's book was written pre-9/11 and is of major interest to Objectivists given its thesis that history is not driven by geography or biological determinism, but rather by free individuals, and that the West's dominance can be attributed to what he calls "rationalism," capitalism and individualism. Hanson simply means reason by what he calls rationalism. Pantano's book argues in part that the business of the military is to win, which serves both our allies and our enemies better by putting an end to conflicts which will never end if they are fought shackled by political correctness and modern kill-no-civilian naiveté. So far as I know, Hanson is actually a hawkish Democrat, while Pantano avoids domestic political pronunciations as a matter of policy. But Hanson also advocates total crushing victory rather than mistaken ideas of containment (stalemate) or altruism (honor). These men are not "intellectuals" per se, but rather they are actually thinkers. The best testimony on their behalves are the negative reviews they have received on Amazon and in the press. To modernize the phrase, "know a man by his enemies."
Ted Keer, 24 November, 2006, USA
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