Wow. Terrific questions Farhad! And thank you, James!

As a history major I am grateful when a strong writer takes the complex facts (Reagan anti-bomb? who knew?!) and shows me how they fit into clear patterns.

Why no letters yet? Was this just posted, or are people just too gobsmacked by it? Where's that Annie Lennox column about gathering in parks on Bastille Day to say (peacefully) "not in my name"?

Seriously, once "we" read this book and mourn, "we" have our work cut out. In my (limited) experience, peace-making is even HARDER than war-making. So my question to the other letter writers is, should we let this pattern, so clearly shown, inform our actions? And if so, how?

Maybe complete nuclear disarmament sounded like a reasonable goal in 1950, when there were just a few great powers and the rest of the world didn't have anything approaching the capacity to build nuclear weapons. But now, I don't see how global nuclear disarmament could possibly be enforced. Over a dozen countries could build nuclear weapons in the next twenty years, if they felt a need for them. And they might very well feel a need for them, to protect themselves against larger/richer countries with more powerful conventional forces. Unless we were willing to mount a conventional invasion of every country that started a nuclear program, it's likely that we'd soon be facing nuclear-armed enemies again.

I don't know if Carroll discusses C. Wright Mills's The Power Elite, not having had an opportunity to read House of War, although I anticipate that I will.

Mills offered much of this argument over 40 years ago-- an argument, sadly, that's only more relavent today.

This whole article is so stunningly absurd that it makes one almost laugh out loud - but I do concede that there are some points of truth in the article (LeMay was nuts- and we were lucky to have someone as ball less as Gorbachev running the Soviet union as it collapsed) - but very few. It would take too long to refute each one - so I will just move to the point that I think is missed, because it is implicitly stated at the first of the article.

The Pentagon has "lost it's way" because the whole thrust of the last 50 years has been to establish an invincible war machine - one that can fight and win battles quickly - but cannot win a war. James Carrol faults Churchill and Roosevelt for declaring a war for "unconditional surrender" because they had the clarity to understand that the ideology that they were fighting needed to be eliminated - not contained. WWII was terrible - a slaughterhouse - but it DID achieve the destruction of the Nazi & Japanese Imperialistic doctrines as a viable political alternative. And the reason that it did that was not by "reasoning" but beating the other side down to the point that they realized that it was either change or die. You may not agree with that level - but would you argue that Germany and Japan today would be remotely similar to the pacifist states they are if WWII had not been so brutal?

The doctrine of war used to be to impose your will on the other side so they changed. The Pentagon today is "smart war" and "shock and awe" to smash down the armies of whoever is on the receiving end - Iraq, Serbia, etc. What you get is the utter defeat of the armies of your adversary - but not a whit of a change in the attitude of the people. In reality, you just set yourself up for another round at a later date. That is the failure - the mechanism of war has been cleaned up to the point where it produces "results" but not impact.

Now - I am NOT advocating nuclear bombing anyone out of existence here, nor I am an advocate of the rape and pillage school of unbridled warfare. But I am saying that the doctrine of war the Pentagon has been hijacked - to produce a never ending series of "victories" in battle - but never a win with some finality. That is the victory of the “military industrial complex” – a system that produces a military that can never truly win anything.

As Lynda Barry warned us on the eve of the first Gulf War, one responsibility of the decision to go to war that is invariably unattended relates to the fact that war gets into the polity's DNA; it becomes a part of who we are. The sad story is that Lynda told us this *way* too late. War has been a part of Americans' DNA for a long, long time.

I first thought of this when I was 14 or so and first heard The Firesign Theatre's "Don't Crush that Dwarf,..." In it, they meld war imagery with suburban life ("Don't eat with your hands, son. Use your entrenching tool"). We ate, drank, slept, voted, etc., war.

A propos all this, I really resonated with Carroll's comment about how Americans now oppose the war for the wrong reasons. This has been hovering at the periphery of my consciousness for some time, and thanks to Carroll for bringing it sharply into mind. Check yourself: Are you aware that Bush's low poll numbers don't necessarily reflect a popular moral reassessment of the situation, but rather a tactical, "armchair general" one?

Our work is certainly not done.

It's a pretty basic historical fact that both Germany and Japan were required to surrender unconditionally, so it's surprising that neither Carroll, Manjoo nor anyone who edited this piece was able to correct its statement that we permitted Japan to surrender conditionally. The fact that we let them keep the Emperor says we were magnanimous in victory--it doesn't mean the surrender was conditional.

It's easy enough to read the original Instrument of Surrender (see paragraph two): http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/japanese_surrender_document/

Carroll still seems to believe in this notion of turning the other cheek. That works, if you believe that this life is just a temporary bridge, a test if you will, toward the "real" life in the hereafter. In this world (i.e. the real world), turning the other cheek just gets you hit again.

At the end of the day, Hobbes had humanity pretty well nailed - peace through superior firepower.