The Christian Science Monitor runs an interesting essay on the real nature of flat-out war, and what happens when wars are fought half-way.

"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? "

---

This is the issue that the Bush gang never thought through. They had experience only in ducking war, not waging it, and none of them knew what it meant; none of them understood the deep, terrible price that follows the starting excitement, and none of them was mature enough to see the lessons of history relating to their rush to invade. This lack of thought would be a civil act of negligence in a lawyer or a computer technician. To wield the power of international warfare with the same slipshod stupidity is, to my mind, criminal negligence of the first degree.

A