Slogging on in Iraq

"Everywhere I've traveled recently in Germany I've run into Americans, ranging from generals down to privates, who ask perplexedly, 'What are we Americans supposed to be doing here? Are we going to take over this place and stay here forever?' "
— Demaree Bess, "How We Botched The German Occupation," in the Jan. 26, 1946, Saturday Evening Post

A friend of mine shared that with me in reference to the ongoing war in Iraq. The message? Sure, the occupation looks bad right now, but they always look bad. Look ahead forty years, and you'll see a much rosier picture.

The comparison, while it sounds good to those favoring the war in Iraq and hoping to downplay the situation in Iraq, is flawed. The difference is that in Germany and Japan, it was over. We had bombed them so hard their spirit was broken and they were ready to do whatever we said -- a fairly normal course of events after a war. There probably was some resistance after the war ended -- I don't know enough about WWII in Europe to say for certain -- but I rather doubt it was as organized and structured as the stuff in Iraq is becoming.

In more recent times, we've tried to sensitize war, with the result that the occupation is going to be more difficult. Additionally, I suspect we're not finding nationalist resistance in Iraq as much as we are ideological resistance, drawn from a broad range of states and held together by a religious hatred of America and what we've done there.

Gen. Eisenhower's intent with Germany was to return it to an agrarian state. The point of dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and then on Nagasake was to break Japan so badly that its people would never want to go to war again.

Given the last 50-odd years of history in Europe and East Asia, I'd say both Eisenhower and President Truman succeeded in their respective goals. They beat the other nations down so hard that no one wanted to go through it again.

Was that moral? I don't think so. Some of our POW camps in Europe were as bad as or worse than Andersonville, and not much better than what the Nazis themselves dished out. The thousands upon thousands who perished in atomic fire were civilians, and they died in some large part because Truman didn't want the conditional surrender Hirohito was about to offer. War is hell, and I doubt very much that God likes it, even if he regards it as a necessity sometimes.

The morality of war has shifted. Nations that target civilians are viewed as international criminals, and when we have killed civilians during bombing in the last few wars, we've almost invariably apologized. As a result, we're not engaged in the total war that marked WWII, and resistance is likely to continue, and new insurgence is likely to rise.

About a year ago I said that I was against the war in Iraq. I felt -- and still feel -- that we lacked the moral authority to invade Iraq based on incidents 10 years ago and on a U.N. Security Council resolution that the U.N. did not want to enforce.

The news reports about what Saddam did to children and dissenters has me convinced more than ever that he needed to go -- but they haven't changed my view that this was the wrong way to do it.

Now, of course, there are those, such as our president, with a "Bring it on" attitude, that if the insurgents and their allies are spoiling for a fight, we'll take it. As I think others have said, I find that line of thinking disturbing.

First, that they are spending their energy killing American troops with increasing frequency and in steadily increasing numbers does not greatly comfort me. Parents are still losing their sons and daughters; husbands and wives are still being separated, often by the grave; and children are still becoming orphans.

The longer this goes on, the more emboldened America's enemies will be and the greater the odds are of the popular Iraqi sentiment shifting toward them. At the moment, the guerilla and terror tactics have been centered around Baghdad, but it's not hard to imagine that will spread as the militants see other opportunities to work their poison.

Secondly, that it has come to this -- people killing people -- is a cause for mourning and prayer, not moral posturing or an arrogant "Bring them on, we can take them" attitude. Somalia and Vietnam are two places where our superior military might failed to contain the situation and we essentially were defeated by a weaker foe (though I daresay the spin forces of the military will categorize it as something other than that).

I also could point to other places throughout history -- the Spanish Aramada against England, Napoleon against England, Edward I against William Wallace, Sennecharib against Judah -- where the strong have fallen to the weak. Some have claimed that God is on our side; from what I understand of the Almighty, that's just wrong. The best we can hope is that we are on his side, and in this case, that's more than I know.

Our best goal at this point is to win and win decisively, or it's just going to get worse. We have seen some successes in this war -- fighting is confied mostly to Baghdad and probably is mostly from extranationals not Iraqis themselves, and our victory there is almost certainly what led to the elections taking place in Saudi Arabia, the first time elections ever have been held in the Kingdom of Saud's history.

On the other hand, I'm not optimistic on our chances of winning a victory against religious extremists. The more victories we have, the more we're going to fuel hatred of us, which will lead to further attacks. It's a vicious cycle that no amount of politics or military might will break.