Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

Chapter 8. Heroes of the Revolution

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Franz Kafka

Whether the War on Terror will prove beneficial either to the United States or to the human race we cannot say. But it certainly proves that every once in a while a man seems to feel the need to turn howling mad and swing his arms around. That is an aspect of war that is underappreciated—the apishness of it.

People are much too simpleminded about mass killing. They see it as either good or bad, right or wrong. Either you are for it or you are against it. A battle turns out to be either a magnificent triumph or an abysmal defeat. When they come up against a Korea or a Vietnam, people don't know what to make of it. It seems incomplete and unsatisfying—like a baseball game that got rained out. They yearn for a simple answer: yes, no; friend, foe. They want to know who wins and who loses.

But, judging from the historical record, most wars have no identifiable winners—especially wars on terror. Usually, such wars end neither in victory nor in defeat, but in humiliation. The fighters merely give up because they are exhausted, broke, and embarrassed. Even when there is an apparent victor, the winner is hardly any better off. Nor is the apparent loser always worse off ! France lost the Franco‐Prussian War after the battle of Sedan in 1870. After that came the Belle Epoch; the nation never had it so good. And a fat lot of good it did the “winners” after they ...