America, Iraq, and the question of total war

If the war in Iraq is really worth fighting, then America should fight with everything it's got.

from the April 12, 2007 edition

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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.

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.

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