Victory in Iraq - Afghanistan

I like the Japanese and I like the Germans. There is much to be admired about the people of both these great nations. Yet, I spent much of my youth nurturing an inflexible hatred for both the Japs and the Krauts. Why the change?

Because of my age, I, thankfully, entered the military too late to experience combat in World War Two, but I spent much time with combat veterans. From them I learned that war is a brutal business. From them I learned that marble monuments and marching bands are not an accurate depiction of war. One writer of the time suggested that to build a war memorial we should dig a huge pit into which every veteran could defecate and vomit until it rotted and stunk and offended everyone for miles around.

But, I also learned from the combat veterans that war is sometimes the only way to bring justice to oppressed peoples... in those instances where injustice is supported by huge and powerful armies. And, I learned the concept that, once in a war, the only acceptable conclusion is complete victory. That is what was achieved in World War Two.

Now, people are debating what we should consider to be success (it is politically incorrect to use the word victory) in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Ken Blackwell, in a column titled "Arab Spring and Islamist Fall" (available at http://townhall.com/columnists/kenblackwell/2011/10/30/arab_spring_islamist_fall), explains it well:

We should be proud of what we accomplished in Japan and Germany, both of which nations are mainstays today of the world economy and, with some salient exceptions (e.g. Germany’s persecution of homeschoolers) models of democratic legitimacy. We de-militarized and de-Nazified these vanquished regimes. We forced changes in their constitutions and in their educational systems. We shaped their economies.

We attempted no such changes in Iraq, Afghanistan, or in any of the other countries in the forever turbulent Mideast. That is why, tragically, any claims of hope and change in this region—especially when based on American dollars—are fatally flawed. We are building our houses upon sand.

I see it as like police caught a man robbing a bank, took back the loot, and let the robber go. The paradigm of World War Two would be to mete out justice in a way that would both prevent further mischief on the part of this robber and scare the pants off anyone else thinking of robbing a bank.