Omar Bradley, an American general in World War II, observed: “In war there is no second prize for the runner-up.” In a similar vein, the legendary Gen. Douglas MacArthur cautioned his fellow Americans: “It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” Despite such warnings, America’s political leaders today — in both the White House and Congress — have waged the war in Iraq as if defeat were acceptable. One wonders why. Although the US has sustained more than 3,000 battle deaths and has spent billions of dollars in Iraq, the nation’s overall fight against Saddam Hussein and his successors has been marked by hesitation and half-steps. That’s how wars are lost.

In 1945, total war led to the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by some 3,000 British and US planes. An estimated 135,000 Germans, mostly civilians, were killed. Within days, other US bombers launched similar raids that created a firestorm in Tokyo that killed nearly 84,000 Japanese and wounded 40,000 more. A few months later, US planes dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Everything and everyone had become a target. Free-World leaders used the attacks on cities to hasten the end of the war with a minimum of Allied casualties. They felt justified. WW II presented a stark choice: kill or be killed. The Allies felt a moral imperative to crush the fascists that threatened Western civilisation.

When the US has fought “total” wars during the past 150 years, it has always won, including the Civil War and WW II. The American South tasted the bitterness of “total war” in 1864 when Union Gen. William Sherman drove everyone, including women and children, out of Atlanta and then burned most of the city to the ground. He then marched 200 miles across Georgia to the sea with 62,000 soldiers who burned and pillaged as they moved through farms and towns. Soon after, the South surrendered.

In Iraq, restraints put on US troops have given the insurgents a military windfall. It has handed them critical time to refine their tactics and search for US weaknesses. Limited warfare has left much of the civilian population in Iraq undeterred as they shelter and support the growing army of insurgents. As the US fights its one-handed campaign, the insurgents are waging their own version of “total war”: It’s not just US and British forces being targeted in Iraq, but mosques, churches, open-air markets, restaurants, shops, government buildings, street corners — anywhere people gather. The carnage is spreading.

America and Britain didn’t win WW II by building playgrounds 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 Bush, Congress, and the Americans 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? — The Christian Science Monitor