The United States once knew how war works. We fought them to win and we understood clearly what it took to bring the war to a successful and lasting conclusion. We learned these lessons first in the Civil War, we honed them in World War I and brought them to perfection in World War II. We backed off these lessons in Korea, even more so in Vietnam and had forgotten completely the lessons of our own history by the time Desert Storm came along. The recent war in Iraq shows that we have totally forgotten how to conduct a war and it will haunt the United States for years to come unless someone in control of our military wises up.

What is the lesson of history? It is so simple. A nation cannot conduct a war against a government and separate that government from the target nation's people. Total war or no war. It is the people's will to support conflict that must be broken in order for peace to be achieved and maintained. How many times have we heard in the last 13 years that our quarrel was not with the people of country "X" but only with their leaders or their military? There are several consequences to trying to fight a war against the leaders of a country without involving the people of that country. The first consequence is no consequences. Fighting a war to behead a nation while leaving the citizens unscathed may sound more civilized, but what it actually does is leaves the population with no real reasons to prevent future evil from ruling their country. It is a lot easier to have a strongman dictator than it is to conduct a democracy. It is made even easier if there is a big boy on the block, like the United States, who will not only come in and depose of a tyrant but will leave your house standing.

Another consequence of the "no fault" approach to war is what we are currently experiencing in Iraq. By sparing the population the horrors of total war, we provided those who opposed in that war us a place to hide out and conduct a guerilla war. We are now faced with an opposing force that goes to war like everyone else goes to work. They fight from the comfort of their own homes and the United States is too politically correct to do much about it for fear of criticism by the International Press. So we are in a lose-lose situation. If we do what is required to win, we are the brutal oppressor, if we do what will satisfy the critics, our troops are picked off one by one and if we pull out, the people we went there to fight in the first place regain power.

I think I have a solution to the current problem in Iraq and a return to reality when faced with the prospects of a war in the future. In Iraq we should admit that we went about it in a mistaken fashion, pick a city, perhaps Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, ordered everyone out of the city into the countryside, and level that city--seriously leveled like Dresden, Germany during WWII. Moonscape. Then we should withdraw all our troops and personnel from the country and promise to return with our new tactic as the norm should they let someone we disapprove of run their country--and mean it.