ISG report, circa 1943

Imagine the progress Franklin D. Roosevelt might have made as commander in chief of American forces during the Second World War if only he could have had the benefit of advice from James Baker, Lee Hamilton and the other members of the Iraq Study Group. Today's column applies its lessons -- indeed, whole sections of its text -- to that earlier quagmire:

Despite the greatest mass mobilization in our country's history, the enemy remains on the offensive and is proceeding to expand its earlier gains. To quote one of the distinguished historians on our extensive panel of consultants: "So swift and far-reaching were the Axis victories during the first six months of 1942 that it seemed the United States had lost the war." --Arthur S. Link, professor of history, Northwestern University, in his "American Epoch." In view of Japanese dominance in the Pacific theater, it is time to open negotiations looking to a stable and enduring peace in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The results of Operation TORCH in North Africa have proved no less disheartening. Despite early progress, the outlook is bleak, as this week's news from Kasserine Pass illustrates.

The recent dedication of the World War II monument in Washington D.C. provides us with more than just an opportunity to express gratitude to one of the greatest generations in American history for their valor, sacrifice, and devotion to duty has they defeated one of the gravest threats to enlightened civilization in history. It also provides us with an opportunity to examine the historical record of World War II and contextualize it in relation to the current situation in Iraq.

If one wishes to adopt the outlook of the contemporary critics of the Iraq enterprise, than World War II could have been characterized as an endless quagmire that we could never win. Relatively few people are aware that the strategic bombing campaign in 1943 nearly ground to a halt when the deep penetration raids into Germany were called off after the staggering heavy bomber losses of the Schweinfurt and Regensberg missions. (So brilliantly characterized in the great World War II movie "12 o'clock High") No one was whining loudly and publicly about the fact that the self defending bomber formation concept was flawed and had revealed itself to be so by not having a long-range fighter escort ready at the time. We are so used to the Air Force sustaining almost no casualties in current day operations that we often forget that the 8th Air Force based in England suffered more dead (26,000) than the entire Marine Corps did in World War II (less than 20,000) There were no loudly public howls of quagmire, quagmire we can't win this.

How about the night naval battle off Savo Island, Guadalcanal in August of 1942 in which the United States Navy, defeated by a Japanese navy far better versed in night fighting tactics, sailed away and left the Marines stranded on Guadalcanal with no immediate hope of supply? There weren't any howls of quagmire, quagmire we can't win.

How about the slaughter off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States in 1942 in which the U-boats of the German Kreigsmarine during Operation Drumbeat sunk 500 allied merchant and navy ships in a six-month period in the greatest naval disaster in United States history? There was an almost incomprehensible failure to develop an efficient convoy escort system despite the lessons of World War I. Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire we can't win, let's make the Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations resign.

How about the Kasserine pass in Tunisia in February of 1943? The tough panzergrenadiers of Rommel's Afrika Corps soundly defeated and routed green American troops, sending them into pell mell retreat. Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire these Germans are just too battle hardened and ruthless to beat. Or the failure to prevent the escape of 40,000 Axis troops across the Straits of Messina after the invasion of Sicily was sucsesfully concluded.

Relatively little is known of the bloody check inflicted on units of the 1st, 4th, 28th, and 9th infantry divisions by the Germans during the battle of Huertegen Forest during Sep- Nov of 1944 as a prelude to the Battle of the Bulge. The men of these units were attrited horribly in one the most soul destroying campaigns in American history, comparable to the Wilderness and Cold Harbor campaigns of the Civil War. Winston Churchill called it "Passchendale with tree bursts." Or the Battle of the Bulge's disastrous opening on the Schnee Eifel in Belgium where intelligence failures allowed a totally surprised American Army to lose to captivity two whole infantry regiments of the 106th infantry division in the opening rounds of the battle? Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire we just can't win.

Or how about the defeat inflicted on the allies during Operation Market Garden (a Bridge Too Far) in 1944 when everyone knew that the Germans were already beaten? Or the horrendous losses off Okinawa? Or the failure to ensure sufficient numbers of tracked landing craft at Tarawa due to a misinterpretation of the meteorological conditions affecting the tides around Betio atoll? Nearly 1,000 Marines died in a 76 hour battle for an atoll smaller than Manhattan's Central Park, many because they had to wade hundreds of yards to shore from Betio's lagoon after their landing craft hung up on the reef. Or the largely unnecessary Pelielu campaign in which 1,800 were killed and 8,500 wounded? Or the bloody repulse at Italy’s Rapido River in January of 1944, or the grinding stalemate at Anzio or the entire checkmated Italian campaign, hopelessly bogged down in the Liri Valley before Monte Cassino? Even though the Rapido River attack generated enormous controversy, culminating in a congressional inquiry, it did not commence until the war was over. Or, due to logistical failures, the inability to maintain the pressure on a retreating German Army, shattered in Normandy, which allowed it to refit and regroup behind the Westwall, lengthening the war and costing thousands of lives. Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire we can't win.

We often forget that World War II was no unrelieved string of victories until the final triumph. We often suffered defeat on the battlefield, sometimes catastrophic ones, but we prevailed because we knew that we had to, since the alternative to victory was just too bitter to contemplate. In 1944, after the Tarawa bloodbath was over, there was a great dispute over whether or not to show the gruesome color film shot by combat cameramen of dead Marines floating in the lagoon of Betio, their bloated, rapidly decomposing corpses turning black in the hot equatorial sun and piled in ragged heaps on the beach. It was feared that the hideous sights would damage home front morale too much. The decision was made by President Roosevelt to release the film and trust that this would impress upon the public the gravity of the maelstrom that their sons were being flung into. The decision was correct. War bond sales skyrocketed after the release of the film, and war production soared as the American people realized that their support for the war effort would help to return their men with victory in hand that much sooner. While our forces in Iraq embody the same sort of heroism and devotion to duty as their predecessors, I wonder if the present day home front is made up of the same stern stuff as its antecedent. I certainly hope so and time will tell.

America’s fighting forces of World War II responded to the above described setbacks with a mix of determination, grim courage, innovation, and a uniquely American quality that historian Victor Davis Hanson terms as “Civic Militarism.” This can be characterized as a combination of virtues possessed by soldiers of those societies that inculcate their armies with the sense that their positive military contributions are derived from a sense of participatory citizenship.

Nothing even remotely resembling any of these historical disasters of World War II has occurred in Iraq, but these infantile naysayers who try to pose the situation has an absolute defeat are either hopelessly naïve or determined to demoralize our soldiers and willfully undermine this effort. Despite the setbacks that have occurred in Iraq, there is nothing here that cannot be remedied to this country's favor.

Our magnificent soldiers, sailors and airmen still have more tough work to do which will undoubtedly be done with the same mix of courage, humanitarianism, innovation, and competence that has characterized our effort in Iraq to date, Abu Ghraib notwithstanding. But when you compare this effort to that other great effort of World War II that we are presently commemorating, this one looks to be comparatively well in hand. All this was accomplished at almost no cost in strictly military terms, and yes, I am aware that the brutal calculus of war is soulless and necessarily heedless of the irreplaceability of precious individual human beings. But we must also realize that wars in the national interest, as I believe this one to be, require that we be prepared to accept this as a condition of our national security.

Again, I wish to express my undying gratitude to a generation of Americans who showed us how to prevail in a REAL quagmire. And to the Americans who are now getting it done and overcoming the quags in the mire despite those who say they can't or shouldn't. As the ever brilliant Mark Steyn said best in his 30 May 2005 Sun-Times column:

“But that's the difference between then and now: the loss of proportion. They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren't a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screwups worth re-examining, but they weren't a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else. They had hellish setbacks but they didn't lose sight of the forest in order to obsess week after week on one tiny twig of one weedy little tree. “
“There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites -- from the deranged former vice president down -- want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.”

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. - John Stuart Mill” ~ (1868)

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