This is the most important, relevant article that I’ve read in years. But you underestimate public revulsion as a driving force in exposing the deterministic ‘human nature’ apology for war. After centuries of state warfare and the orgy of death in the 20th century, Europe wants nothing to do with war and agression. The American public considered hundreds of thousands of ‘enemy killed’ and chemical warfare as legitimate features of the Vietnam War. Not so with Iraq. The public has judge this war, in significant measure, on the military’s ability to limit the death of civilians. Same all over. Israel may have been justified in entering Gaza to stop rockets being fired at civilians within its territory, but international opinion raged against what it considered ‘overkill’ in action.

Concern over civilian casualties separates the 21st century from all others. It is the barometer of humanity’s ability to push forward into a new era - or at least testifies against a deterministic and apologetic view that ‘human nature’ is inherently warlike.

Then there’s Vietnam vs. Iraq. The generals knew Vietnam was lost in 1964. Ten years and thousands of lives later, the war ended. Americans saw through and turned against the Iraq invasion in less than five years and consolidated their opposition by electing a presidential candidate who opposed it from the beginning.

Winterking07, commenting below, cites examples in support of the argument that we’ve seen what he calls the author’s ‘idealism’ before. He puts up a good argument. But in a dog-eat-dog battle, I’ll place my bets with Mr. Hogan.

Estimates in Iraq range from 100,000 to well over a million. It doesn't make you wonder that the US specifically doesn't keep track? Abu Graib? There are four and a half million Iraqi refugees, more than half of those outside Iraq. The doctors, professors, and engineers are the ones that left, mainly because they had the means to, and probably won't come back. Yes, we elected a president who was against it from the beginning. So? Now we're blowing things up in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And yes, the generals (at least the honest ones) knew the Vietnam war was lost ten years before it ended. I wonder how many generals know now that the war in Afghanistan will end the same way? Most of the casualities in WW1 were military; most in wars in the late 20th and early 21st are civilian.

Vietnam knocked us for a loop financially: the dollar was cut loose from gold and we went from being a creditor nation to a debtor one, recently massively. What's next? (Here I got a bit off-topic. Sorry.)

Long live the Empire!

Human nature is not an apology for war. It is more about self awareness. We as humans, all have the seeds of war in us but war isn't always the result. We all have a revulsion to war. Human have not found war to be any more revolting than our ancestors. The majority of the population has never wanted war even when we were mere tribes. War is always a game of perceived cost and gain. Even Hitler would have avoided war to take the Western USSR without war if he could have. So, it is not war that is "human nature", it is lust for power, space and resources that is human nature. Most likely this is due to evolution of our species, after all the strongest competition in nature is actually within the species not between other species. When we were starting out, the tribes that were most ambitious and aggressive would have undoubtedly overrun and destroyed those that weren't. It was beneficial to lust for power over resources then, and it is today. This doesn't mean we love to go to war, most of us have always hated war from the time we were using stone tools, but it does mean that we all have the capacity to engage in wars and we will when the benefit outweighs the cost. Stating that war is a reality of the human experience doesn't mean that I am rooting for war, it just means that I understand that it is a part of life. It has a role in shaping who we are, life is the combination of the beautiful and the ugly ( all newborn babys, will eventually be rotting corpses at some point, tornados are beautiful... and deadly, etc. etc. in nature, destruction often is the prelude to new life). This doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to reduce war either, it just means that I realize that there will always be cases where war will be unavoidable. The world is an extremely violent and brutal place with or without humans. War has been with us from the begining, our books and movies are filled with some form of warfare or another. As long as we love conflict (which we all do, even the most peaceful of all pacifists) we will have wars, but we will also have peace, yin and yang.

You are so right about the # of Iraqi civilian deaths that were actually covered up. I should have addressed this as a point in my argument. I think that is one reason people turned against the war in Iraq, and now the Afghan and Pakistani governments (of all people) are focusing on civilian casualties from (at least) US raids. The revulsion at civilian deaths is a deterrent, particularly in state-to-state war.

You're overstating your case somewhat. War is a part of human nature for many young males. These kids don't want land and money, they want guts and glory.