Omar Bradley, an American general in World War II, observed: "In war there is no second prize for the runner-up." In a similar vein, the legendary Gen. Douglas MacArthur cautioned his fellow Americans: "It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it."

Despite such warnings, America's political leaders today – in both the White House and Congress – have waged the war in Iraq as if defeat were acceptable. One wonders why.

Although the United States has sustained more than 3,000 battle deaths and has spent billions of dollars in Iraq, the nation's overall fight against Saddam Hussein and his successors has been marked by hesitation and half-steps.

That's how wars are lost.

The Allies won WWII against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan with an all-out effort and resolute orders from the top. President Franklin Roosevelt called for "total war" on the Axis powers. He demanded "unconditional surrender.

Are America's current leaders that tough?

The meaning of 'total war'

Roosevelt's reference to "total war" was not mere rhetoric. Total war means everything belonging to the enemy is a potential target – their factories, their cities, even their civilians. With clear orders from Roosevelt, generals such as Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton knew what to do. They obliterated Germany's and Japan's will to fight. The cost was high, including hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in the Axis homelands.

In 1945, total war led to the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by some 3,000 British and US planes. An estimated 135,000 Germans, mostly civilians, were killed. Within days, other US bombers launched similar raids that created a firestorm in Tokyo that killed nearly 84,000 Japanese and wounded 40,000 more. A few months later, US planes dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Everything and everyone had become a target. Free-World leaders used the attacks on cities to hasten the end of the war with a minimum of Allied casualties. They felt justified. WWII presented a stark choice: kill or be killed. The Allies felt a moral imperative – an absolute duty – to crush the fascist powers that threatened Western civilization.

Does the United States have the same moral conviction today to win the war in Iraq? Listening to the debates in Congress, one would think the answer is no. Nor has the president's leadership been decisive on this point.

President Bush has warned that if US forces withdraw from Iraq, a global terrorist movement will follow the troops back to American soil. He has compared "Islamic fascism" with the Nazi threat.

Is this true? If so, then why is America's response so half-hearted? Where is the national mobilization of earlier wars? Why is there no draft? Why is the burden of this war falling primarily on a few hundred thousand military volunteers while the rest of us are told to go shopping?

Clearly the US could win the war in Iraq if it wished. It is, after all, a superpower. Perhaps a moral ambiguity about this war makes Washington hesitate. The leaders in Washington, for reasons only they fully understand, have chosen to fight a limited war with shifting goals.

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