The horror, the horror

As soon as the allies crossed the Naktong River into the Perimeter that August, they turned around and blew up the refugee-choked bridges to prevent the enemy from crossing behind them, in the process killing hundreds of screaming civilians on the spans and stranding the remaining thousands of refugees between the river and the North Korean guns. Then the Americans, under written orders, began systematically shooting any refugees who attempted to cross the water. Although the 7th Cavalry Regiment's slaughter of civilians at No Gun Ri, which is at the heart of the AP journalist's book, occurred a few days earlier and farther back along the line of retreat, the "reasoning" behind it was much the same as that which drove the order to shoot civilians trying to cross the Naktong river. The American high command feared that among the throngs of refugees were North Korean infiltrators trying to get behind American lines where, it was thought, they would abandon their civilian disguises and fall upon the allies from the rear.

That was the story, anyway. However, while enemy infiltration is certainly a realistic concern once warfare has degenerated into guerilla operations, there was little reason for the North Koreans to resort to such subterfuges at that point in the conflict. The allies were so thin on the ground and so lacking in discipline and experience that conventional North Korean forces easily outmaneuvered them. Some parts of the American front were literally miles apart, permitting the North Koreans to make flanking incursions between two parts of the army. The demolition of the Naktong River bridges was arguably a military necessity, but the North Korean troops were still miles away when the bridges were dynamited. There's little doubt that the more immediate concern at that moment was to stop the refugees from crossing into the Perimeter.

Hanson would be likely to see the Korean refugees' ordeal -- being shot at and blown up by the very forces that were supposedly sent to save them -- as an example of "cultural crystallization," where "insidious" and "murky" elements of Western culture become "stark and unforgiving in the finality of organized killing." That's a fancy way of saying that the stories Americans were telling themselves, true or untrue, when they came to Korea -- about who they were, why they were in this war-torn Asian nation, and who they were dealing with -- were the driving force and underlying structure of the nationwide massacre in which No Gun Ri was only a bloody blip. The stories, which focused Western cultural values and fears on the refugees, were the justification for the killings.

And a sense of justification for inflicting widespread death seems to be crucial for Western warriors, despite Hanson's claim that the cutthroat qualities of Western warfare are merely pragmatic or "amoral." We in the West have in fact created whole systems of moral justification for our conduct of warfare, which Hanson acknowledges -- and even contributes to -- whether he realizes it or not. First, the war stories he chooses to tell us highlight the qualities of Western culture most Westerners -- or at least conservative Westerners -- would consider positive: the concepts of individual freedom, decisive efficiency, consent of the governed, private property, innovative technology, capitalism, voluntary discipline and the tolerance of dissent and critique. In the end, Hanson makes a seductive case for the idea that because Western warfare has been incredibly murderous, it has also been relatively speedy and decisive, and has served arguably "good" long-term causes -- the important one by his lights, of course, being the advancement of the more treasured elements of Western civilization.

While Hanson honestly admits that, as in the case of the British invasion of Zululand, there is often little or no moral justification for the initiation of the conflicts he dissects, the stories he tells nonetheless almost uniformly congratulate and justify the "amorally" bloody Western way of war. It is only when warriors abandon their good -- or at least extremely practical -- Western principles, Hanson says, that they begin to lose.

Next page: Custer's old regiment strikes again