Nicholas Kristof, in the New York Times today, looks to the classics for analogies to explain the trajectory of George Bush’s presidency and the “adventures” in Iraq. In the “Aeneid”, Alcibiades forgoes all warnings and invades Sicily, believing that the Athenians will be welcomed with flowers and seen as liberators. The strength of the opposition is underestimated, but rather than retreat the Athenians choose to “escalate”, resulting in a catastrophic defeat for them, ultimately leading to the fall of democracy and Athens being conquered by Sparta. Then there’s the analogy to “Moby Dick.” Captain Ahab becomes so obsessed by his fanatical pursuit of the great white whale that he loses all perspective and spirals into self-destruction, ultimately destroying Ahab and his ship.
         Opponents of the war have continuously looked for historical or allegorical analogies to explain what they see as the destructive consequences of “Bush’s War”. It’s all in Bush’s head, and if only he had heeded the warnings of history, we wouldn’t be in such a mess in Iraq. Opponents of the war, and especially liberals, have not loved an analogy more than the one of Vietnam. Vietnam, you see, was a “quagmire” that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives and billions of dollars wasted for the supposed purpose of heading off communism in Southeast Asia. It was a lost cause and certainly not worth the price. If only Bush had studied his recent history, or second guessed some of those in his administration who were architects of the first losing war, we wouldn’t even be in Iraq today, or at least we would have pulled out long ago. Those of us on the right are quick to separate Iraq from Vietnam and point out the many differences, including the fact that 3,000 lost American lives pale in comparison to 57,000 during Vietnam. But perhaps we’re too quick to simply dismiss some of these historical analogies.
         I recently revisited the movie “Apocalypse Now” for the first time in several years. Francis Ford Coppola’s film is based on a novel called “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad. In the story, Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen, is sent on a secret mission up a river into Cambodia to find and “terminate with extreme prejudice” Col. Walter Kurtz, played of course by Marlon Brando. Col. Kurtz, we’re told, has gone insane and has installed himself as a god to a local tribe. The military has no choice but to kill this once highly decorated Green Beret who has become a rogue across enemy lines. Willard, already burnt out from previous missions prior to receiving his orders to find Kurtz, soon finds himself in the fog of war; the same fog that manifested itself so deeply into the apparently stable psyche of Col. Kurtz. That fog, a visual motif throughout the film, does not refer to the trials of logistics in a confusing and chaotic environment as the expression “fog of war” usually implies. It goes beyond that; rather, it’s a fog clouding our own moral judgment, manifesting itself deep in our minds, causing us to question the very essence of who we are.
         On the boat up the river to Cambodia, Willard experiences first hand the morally chaotic environment created by a breakdown in the command structure, resulting in a disturbing free-for-all, where a Lieutenant’s first priority after destroying a Vietnamese village is to find good waves for surfing; where many of the soldiers are stoned or tripping on L.S.D.; and where indiscriminate killing of women and children has become common place and without a second thought. Lost are the questions of why we’re fighting in the first place -- killing has become killing without any other purpose. Willard begins to experience his own descent into the confusion created by killing without moral purpose. Whatever moral or upstanding reasons these men were sent to fight for in the first place have become tragically lost; and these men have become nothing more than pleasure seeking killing machines.
         Late in the film, Willard, having survived a descent into his own psychosis, finally makes it to Col. Kurtz’s village. It’s immediately clear that Kurtz has installed himself as a god or a king or both, and it’s clear he has accomplished this both with his superior intellect as well as his brutality. Naked dead bodies are seen hanging from trees, from stakes in the ground, piled into pits, and several heads litter the walkways surrounding his fortress. We get the sense that Willard wants to talk to Kurtz, to try and understand him, even more than he wants to complete his mission and terminate him, even if it means risking his own life to do so. He gets that chance, after Kurtz has him locked up in solitary confinement for an unknown period of time. Kurtz, knowing that Willard was sent to kill him, could have simply killed Willard instead at any time.  He doesn’t do this, and we’re left wondering if perhaps he wants Willard to fulfill his mission. During the famous climax, with Brando’s bald head bathed in a single spotlight, he describes “the horror” to Willard. Kurtz tells the story of how his unit was sent to a Vietnamese village to inoculate the children against polio. They returned some time later to find that the enemy had sawed off every single child’s arm who received the inoculation, finding a “pile of tiny arms.” The story is outrageous and sickening, and serves to underline the extent to which the enemy will go to achieve its ends.
         This is at the core of Kurtz’s monologue, as well as Willard’s own inner moral dilemma. These are men who were sent with a moral purpose to fight an enemy who will use any means to justify their ends, whether it be killing “innocent” women and children, torture, sabotage, terrorism. These methods are all justified because driving out the foreign invaders and spreading communism are worth any cost. There is no moral judgment on anything but the end result. The ends always justify the means.
         America was born from Europe, from a world where war was conducted with honor and rules. War was always hell and it was always brutal, but there was always a code, always lines that separated war from crimes against humanity. Southeast Asia was a different world. These people had known only centuries of fighting and repression. When Americans were sent to fight in this world, part of them had to become as ruthless as the enemy, throwing into doubt the morality of the bigger mission, where the means sometimes overtook the ends. The military has always had to engage in activity that is morally questionable in order to protect the morals of our society from outside dangers. The military must sometimes do awful things to other people to protect the rest of us from awful people. That’s why the mission and the purpose must always be clear: we need to know that the ends do indeed justify the means. If they don’t, our moral structure breaks down, and we suffer defeat, whether it be militarily or psychologically.
         Today, we again find ourselves facing an enemy in a part of the world that fights without rules. We face a people, much like the Southeast Asians, who believe that the means always justify the ends. Everyone is a combatant in their version of warfare. We are held to our rules of engagement while they fight by none. We have found ourselves collectively in the fog. How do we fight such an enemy without sacrificing our own morals and values? To sacrifice them could lead to moral chaos and a war without justification; to refuse to fight could lead to an emboldened enemy who will only make things worse for us after they become stronger.
         During Vietnam, the antiwar camp eventually weakened our resolve to the point where we pulled our forces and our support away from the free people of South Vietnam. This was seen as a betrayal by those who were quickly overrun by the communists. The domino theory never really played out, but perhaps this is because of all of those years America held ground there and continued fighting. Still, South Vietnam became communist and the people there suffered through another fifteen years of war with China and Cambodia.
         Today, nothing in the war on terror has amounted to atrocities like the My Lai massacre, where American G.I.s indiscriminately killed hundreds of women, old men, children, and babies, primarily out of revenge for the Americans’ own losses. What happened at Abu Ghraib pales when compared to My Lai, and it pales when compared to tactics employed by the enemy we’re fighting. Still, it outrages and offends many people in this country and throughout the civilized world. Even the detentions at Guantanamo Bay send people frothing. Therefore, is it even possible to engage and fight an enemy like the Vietnamese or the Islamic fundamentalists without breaking our own rules of civility and morality in warfare? If we do break them, do we sacrifice our own moral structure and fall victim to the ends justifying the means? If we don’t, we may put our defenders abroad and at home in situations impossible to win.
         Perhaps history will show that Iraq was indeed Bush’s great white whale. But Bush didn’t create militant Islamic fundamentalists any more than Johnson or Nixon created ruthless Asian communists. This broader war is not just “Bush’s War”; it belongs to all of us. If we remain engaged on all fronts, only a shared sense of purpose will get us through the collective fog. Otherwise, we can simply leave it alone and withdraw from this war, confident that we’ve retained our own inner morals, and let the dominoes fall where they may.