Limited wars, limited results

History does not look kindly on such limited wars by the US.

Since WWII, the US has fought four large but conditional wars. Korea was a stalemate; Vietnam was a loss. The first Persian Gulf War was the only clear victory. Iraq II hangs in the balance.

However, when the US has fought "total" wars during the past 150 years, it has always won, including the Civil War and World War II. The American South tasted the bitterness of "total war" in 1864 when Union Gen. William Sherman drove everyone, including women and children, out of Atlanta and then burned most of the city to the ground. He then marched 200 miles across Georgia to the sea with 62,000 soldiers who burned and pillaged as they moved through farms and towns. Soon after, the South surrendered.

In Iraq, restraints put on US troops have given the insurgents a military windfall. It has handed them critical time – more than four years – to refine their tactics and search for US weaknesses. Limited warfare has left much of the civilian population in Iraq undeterred as they shelter and support the growing army of insurgents.

As the US fights its one-handed campaign, the insurgents are waging their own version of "total war": It's not just US and British forces being targeted in Iraq, but mosques, churches, open-air markets, restaurants, shops, government buildings, street corners – anywhere people gather. The carnage is spreading.

Air Marshall Sir Robert Saundby, one of those involved in the deadly 1945 air attacks on Dresden, said in the foreword to "The Destruction of Dresden," by David Irving: "It's not so much this or the other means of making war that is immoral or inhumane. What is immoral is war itself. Once full-scale war has broken out it can never be humanized or civilized...."

Sir Robert then adds this critical point: "... and if one side attempted to do so [wage a humanized war] it would be most likely to be defeated."

Win – or go home

That may be happening to the US now in Iraq. America and Britain didn't win WWII by building playgrounds and schools and setting up local governments. They won by pounding the other side into dust. As American Gen. George Patton once said, "Nobody ever defended anything successfully; there is only attack and attack and attack some more." Rebuilding comes later.

Many Americans say we should never have attacked Iraq in the first place. Afghanistan is where the real enemy was. It's an argument historians will have to settle. But the piecemeal way this Iraq war has been fought has added to the injury on all sides.

Perhaps the message to Mr. Bush, Congress, and the American people should be: If this fight is worth doing, if America truly has an unquestionable moral imperative to win, then wage it with everything you've got. Otherwise, why is America there?

• John Dillin covered the Vietnam war for the Monitor in 1966-67 and later served as its managing editor.

Page: 1 | 2