Victory Before Magnanimity

From the Corner on negotiations during the Falklands War:

She [Thatcher] had to maneuver very carefully, however, to ensure that a reasonable compromise did not become a disguised surrender in the course of negotiations. And not just maneuver, but sometimes say firmly and clearly that she was having none of it. The climax of this more subtle battle came when Reagan himself asked her to accept a truce that would allow the hard-pressed Argentines in Port Stanley to avoid outright defeat. She turned him down flat, saying in the memoirs that she believed in the Churchillian motto of magnanimity in victory, but not in magnanimity before victory.

Update: And, explaining the consequences of getting it backward, here's Derbyshire:

Wars should be fought with the utmost ferocity, to the complete destruction and humiliation of the enemy, and without any regard to casualties among noncombatants in his territories. To fight a war in any other kind of way is to sow dragon's teeth, as the second half of the 20th century illustrates. Yet such a war is impossible under present Western sensibilities. America has now been fighting the War on Terror for longer than we fought WW2 -- yet we have not even captured Osama bin Laden!

I do believe that people know these things instinctively and will not for long whole-heartedly support a half-hearted war -- not in Britain, not in America. These kinder'n'gentler wars of the present age will never have strong public support, and so will always be tied, or lost.

Most likely the terrorists will get nukes and destroy a couple of our cities, with casualties in the 6- or 7-digit range. We shall then revert to tribal-warfare mode and do to our enemies what our fathers did to the Japanese, or perhaps even what our great-grandfathers did to the Plains Indians. It would be better to do those things before we lose the cities, but of course we can't. "Ripeness is all."

This is exactly what I am afraid of. I think we Americans are quite capable of pulling the trigger if we face an existential threat. Not to get too dramatic. I don't know where the tipping point is, but we are nowhere near feeling that threatened yet, as evidenced by our rather pathetic border control and immigration policies. But 6-7 figure casualties? It won't just be the commenters at Little Green Footballs calling for some glass making in the Middle East. That's why I hope that we get serious, treat this situation like the war it is, and win it before we get to that point.

Update: Just to clarify, I'm as soft as anyone when it comes to violence. I have issues with Derb's suggestion that we fight "without any regard to casualties among noncombatants in [the enemy's] territories" That's why I'd like to see us getting tough in as many non-violent ways as possible, with the hope of eliminating the future need for total war. Where we could do better:

• Why, oh why, are we still taking grandma's nailclippers at the airport, but letting God-knows-who walk over the border?
• Let's stop whining about Guantanamo. In fact, let's get more people in there.
• Dual citizenship. I'm going to post on this later.