Shelves groan with \u201cfamous battles\u201d accounts, and journalist and author Walsh has written another. Although no soldier, he has done his homework, and some military buffs will likely not object to his low opinion of the \u201cpolitically correct\u201d claim that war \u201cnever solves anything\u201d and is shameful and destructive and marks a failure in national leadership. The reality, he maintains, is that war provides a \u201ctemporary, and often quite long-lasting, solution to most of the world\u2019s most intractable conflicts.\u201d He adds that war is foundational to every society throughout history. It will \u201cnever be abolished, and never lose its attraction for young and virile men.\u201d He emphasizes that war remains a male obsession and that\u2014in a claim that will raise more than a few eyebrows\u2014\u201cany culture that is forced to rely on women in combat is destined to lose.\u201d (He assures female readers that women experience their own epiphany in childbirth.) Walsh then delivers 300 pages on wars from Troy to the present day, showing great admiration for (little surprise) the military tactician Napoleon. His epilogue\u2014\u201cOf the Battle of 9\/11\u201d\u2014delivers a summing-up that many readers will suspect is coming. Throughout history, he writes, great nations and great commanders fought to destroy an opponent. There was never a concept of \u201climited\u201d war, but that has been American policy since 1945, and he loathes it. He points out that since then the U.S. has never won a significant war but has lost several, including the war on terror, and we show no signs of confronting today\u2019s bad actors.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shelves groan with \u201cfamous battles\u201d accounts, and journalist and author Walsh has written another. Although no soldier, he has done his homework, and some military buffs will likely not object to his low opinion of the \u201cpolitically correct\u201d claim that war \u201cnever solves anything\u201d and is shameful and destructive and marks a failure in national […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}