From here to eternity: the unintended consequences of war.

• Author: Meacham, Jon
• Position: On Political Books - Book Review

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, horrified by the news from the East Coast, Victor Davis Hanson began writing. A classicist and farmer in California, Hanson kept at it everyday through that momentous fall, ultimately publishing his thoughts and pieces in a small but highly influential book entitled An, Autumn of War. The collection's overarching (and, to me, convincing) theme: that war is an inherent element of the human condition and that the wisest course in a fallen world--one in which evil can strike out at innocents, without warning, on a brilliantly blue morning, widowing spouses and orphaning children is to appreciate the tragic quality of life. Once we accept that the world will almost always fall short of our expectations, that man is not perfectible, and that answering violence with violence is sometimes the moral thing to do, we can start to make ourselves, our children, and our culture more secure. Hanson's book was read at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Now comes a new offering from Hanson, Ripples of Battle, which once again has a strong resonance with the events of the day. This book arrives in an uneasy climate, a time that seems less certain than the months after September 11. In the long run, will the war with Iraq ignite a democratic revolution in the Middle East? Or will it strengthen the deadly hand of Islamic extremists? Of will there be entirely unforeseeable consequences? After reading Hanson's book--a case study of three battles long ago-my vote is for the last of these possibilities.

Ripples of Battle is in some ways an even more sober book than An Autumn of War, and I hope that the same important people who read the first will consider the second with care. We all know about what we might call "the waves of war"-that the Civil War abolished slavery and made us one nation, and World War II conquered Nazism and unleashed the atom. Leaders who use only broad strokes to create the impression that wars unfold in neat sequences (enemy identified; enemy overthrown; energies of previously captive peoples unleashed; democracy reigns; security established), however, are not leading well. No serious person should ever try to predict what comes after a war, and in these times Americans deserve realistic and candid assessments of how hard it is to project power and build peaceful nations.

Hanson writes well, in a learned but accessible voice. "Books abound on Hannibal's encirclement at Cannae, the stealth of...