Actually that Luttwak article...

...gets even better (see, I hadn't read it fully before posting).

He makes the point that the reason we can't bear casualties is because with the decline in the birth rate, nowadays families typically only have one male child. But if that is true and it is also true that Third World (including Arab) birth rates are declining then doesn't that tend to imply that the urge to war will come to an end through entirely natural processes? In other words, the current war is no more than a cork bobbing up and down on a demographic tide.

Sometimes, when I am in one of my darker moods I wonder if all this banging on about politics (with the aim of changing things) isn't all a complete waste of time and that politics is controlled by far deeper cultural forces over which we have absolutely no control. All we politicos can ever hope to do is to give some sort of moral imprimatur to something that was inevitable.