THE BELL CURVE: WWII, Iraq War contrasts grow

Two of the seminal defining events in my life have been the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, whose sixth anniversary is being remembered throughout the U.S. as I write this. The ranks of those of us who experienced both events is thinning, and before many more years, direct comparisons will disappear. And so the urge to draw them grows.

So does the need to contrast rather than compare them. The overpowering similarity was, of course, that these two events represented the only times since the War of 1812 that we were attacked on our own soil. As an immediate result, we came together in remarkable solidarity as a nation. That solidarity continued and even grew throughout World War II. But the story is quite different in the aftermath of 9/11. That history was still being made last Monday when Gen. David Petraeus, who is commanding our troops in Iraq, appeared before a Congressional committee in Washington, in a deeply divided country.

To those of us who remember so vividly the days and years after Pearl Harbor, the most powerful recollection is the manner in which we pulled together at almost every level of our society, from stamps to buying meat and gasoline at home to a civilian military that distinguished itself on battlefields all over the world.

That kind of solidarity lasted only a few months after 9/11. It started to fracture when our government turned its attention from the search in Afghanistan for the perpetrators of 9/11 to Iraq, an authoritarian country whose dictator had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The solidarity returned for a time when our troops were sent to fight in Iraq and scored an apparently quick victory over a regime we were told was stockpiling weapons to use against us.

But since our president made a theatrical landing on an aircraft carrier to announce our victory, the contrasts with my war have grown and grown, along with the division in our country. Instead of celebrating a successful ending to the war in Iraq, our troops have had to fight against an endless and dedicated insurgency — and the contrasts with World War II have multiplied relentlessly. Two in particular.

First, my war was fought with a civilian army, supported by a military draft that drew from every level of our society. The current war is being fought by a volunteer army and National Guard troops who are exhausted and increasingly embittered after being forced to return to Iraq three and four times as military recruitment has thinned out dangerously. And embittered also by the lack of support at home, including inadequate provision of the tools of war by their own government.

Second, in World War II, we had complete confidence in our government and the people running it.

Confidence in our leaders running the Iraq war has been undermined almost weekly by repeated exposure of the lies and deceit and bumbling that has characterized its civilian direction.

If we are to salvage anything affirmative from this desolate adventure beyond disposing of a two-bit dictator who offered no threat to us, it would have to be a reprise of the same lessons we learned in Vietnam, principally that we have no business involving ourselves in a distant civil war that can’t be sold at home and that does not legitimately threaten our well-being.

I wonder how many post-Vietnam wars it will take to learn that lesson. And I wonder, too, what influence living through Iraq will have on the kids who are remembering it this week in school — and will one day be running the country.