Try as I might, it has been impossible to avoid the commentaries and demonstrations that have marked the anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq four years ago today. As pressure grows for the United States to withdraw its forces, President George W. Bush on Monday implied that we don’t have the stomach for a protracted war: “It can be tempting to look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude our best option is to pack up and go home.”
Even though we like to characterize America as a “peace-loving country,” this nation has been at war almost constantly since the Declaration of Independence in 1776, which came after the shooting had already started in a fight against Great Britain, and that war lasted another seven years.
Independence begat a long war, or perhaps more properly, a series of wars – the Indian Wars, with battles extending from Fallen Timbers in 1794 to Wounded Knee in 1890.
The 19th century also offered other American conflicts: the War of 1812, which ran until 1815; the Mexican War of 1846-48; the Civil War of 1861-65; the Spanish-American war of 1898-1902.
Move to the 20th century, and there was World War I, with American involvement in 1917-18; and World War II, 1941-45. Along the way there were several expeditions, now often forgotten, to Central American and Caribbean countries to protect American corporate interests.
After World War II, there was Korea, 1950-53, and Vietnam, roughly 1964-76. And from 1946 to 1989 or so, we had the Cold War. In other words, it’s hard to find a single day in American history that the nation was not at war with somebody, somewhere.
Sometimes, presidents are honest about what they expect of citizens, as with John F. Kennedy in his 1961 inaugural address at the height of the Cold War. He called on Americans “to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out,” and promised that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship.”
But more often, the politicians are pollyannas and the generals suffer for being realistic. After Southern states seceded in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln initially believed the rebellion could be quelled in 90 days.
Gen. Winfield Scott, Mexican War hero and chief commander of the federal army, was not so optimistic. He said it would take at least three years, and a much larger army, to isolate and subdue the south. He was soon removed from command.
In the fall of 1861, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman commanded federal forces in Kentucky. He said that if he had an army of 200,000 men, he could finish the war in the western theater between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.
For that statement, he was called insane and relieved from command. After he was restored, he did finish the war in that theater in 1864 – and it took about 200,000 federal soldiers.
In 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq, Gen. Eric Shinseki told a congressional committee that “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We’re talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this.”
His sanity wasn’t questioned, but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Shinseki’s estimate was “far off the mark” and did not attend his retirement ceremony four months later.
In February of 2003, Rumsfeld said the Iraq war “could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.” The next month, Vice President Dick Cheney predicted the war “would go relatively quickly,” in “weeks rather than months.”
On Monday, the president told us that “success will take months, not days or weeks,” but he has opposed any timetable.
Is it too much to ask the Bush administration why it deserves public support, when it’s been so wrong for so long? Americans have fought long wars, short wars, defensive wars, invasive wars, just about any kind of war you can image. But there’s got to be a limit on national tolerance for being misled.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
