Nothing Less Than Victory

Last night I finished reading John David Lewis's excellent book Nothing Less Than Victory. I posted the following review at amazon:

John David Lewis takes the reader through the important steps of six separate wars in ancient and modern times ranging from the Greeks and Romans to the U.S. Civil War and World War II. In each case he illustrates in detail the importance of moral ideas as the necessary motivating factors in a decisive defeat of an enemy. Only a consistent, principled commitment to the rightness of one's cause and therefore a willingness to take the fight to the "center of gravity" of the enemy will result in the enemy's permanent surrender. The rightness of one's cause should not be arbitrary but be based on a rational, fact-based recognition of the moral superiority of one's civilization. Highly recommended!

One hopes that today and tomorrow's policy makers will read this book as well as Elan Journo's Winning the Unwinnable War: America's Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism.