ABSOLUTE ANNIHILATION OF THEIR ADVERSARIES

"...Western nations at war, from the Greeks to the present, are not weak but enormously lethal - far out of proportion to their relatively small population and territory. This power is not an accident of geography, much less attributable to natural resources or genes, but rather found in its very ideas and values. The foundations of Western culture - freedom, civic militarism, capitalism, individualism, constitutional government, and secular rationalism - when applied to the battlefield have always resulted in carnage for their adversaries.
...
The world, much less the blinkered fundementalists, has not seen a United States unleashed for a long time and so has forgotten all this. Americans are kind, and they are generous people. But when wronged, held in contempt, and attacked in peace, THEY DEFINE VICTORY AS THE ABSOLUTE ANNIHILATION OF THEIR ADVERSARIES...."

Victor Davis Hanson
(Excerpted from "Western Nations Are Slow to Anger, but Lethal in Their Fury")
Written on September 12, 2001
Published in the Daily Telegraph on September 21, 2001