War leads to disillusionment. World War I cast a long shadow over England that one may detect among Britons today. The emotional and moral residue of the Vietnam War lingers in America.

Wars leave a bad taste because very seldom do they live up to their promise. That is especially so if a nation has been tricked into a commitment of troops.

American disillusionment with the Iraq War has begun. President Bush’s plummeting polling numbers tell us that. Mr. Bush’s shifting rationale for the war is another clue.

The basic disconnect in all wars is that combat is not glamorous. The broad mass of Americans who have been fed John Wayne movies (except for They Were Expendable) might believe otherwise. But the essential residue is that killing leaves scars, even on the survivors. One of Astoria’s most poignant stories is about a man who returned from World War II. After his father drove him home, he went upstairs to his bedroom and shot himself.

A West Point professor of philosophy and ethics is probing the depth of that vestige of war. The Wall Street Journal reported Aug. 17 that Major Peter Kilner has sought responses from combat veterans throughout the Army. Military police instructors as well as Army chaplains have engaged in Maj. Kilner’s discussion.

Greg Jaffe of the WSJ reported that, “Four years of heavy combat … are slowly altering the way the Army talks about this long-taboo subject. It’s a shift that Maj. Kilner, along with other Army officers and military psychiatrists, say is long overdue.”

The fear of killing cuts two ways. It inhibits soldiers from using their weapons in combat. It also scars some soldiers for life.

Killing becomes especially difficult if the American public turns against a war. Army Capt. Jerry Moon said: “What if public opinion swings against this war? If the American people don’t see this as a just war, does that make the killing harder?”

During my bifurcated college career – interrupted by 13 months as a Marine in Vietnam – one professor spanned my two alma maters. Frederick L. Schuman taught at Williams College and Portland State University. Schuman was a major figure in World War II diplomacy. He wrote a widely used textbook on world politics.

Schuman lectured that Vietnam was a “policy war.” That is, Vietnam was not threatening our borders. A policy war might make sense to diplomats, but not to the general public. Therefore, said Schuman, imperial Great Britain never fought policy wars with draftees. England used mercenaries to fight those wars. Once President Johnson eliminated the graduate school deferment to the draft, opposition to the Vietnam War entered the middle class.

Iraq is a policy war, and we are fighting it with volunteers, not draftees. The great mass of Americans are greatly removed from this war, because their sons and daughters are not involved and are not vulnerable to becoming involved. The Bush administration has nurtured that disconnect by forbidding photographs of coffins returning from Iraq.

In a nutshell, many Americans see a morass in Iraq. What exactly are we supposed to be accomplishing by having our soldiers be sitting ducks in the midst of a tribal-religious, internecine conflict? How do we define “victory”?

All presidents have a difficult time admitting a mistake of this magnitude. President Bush deluded himself while deluding the American people about the urgency of this war. He believed someone about how quickly it would end, and here we are more than two years later with 1,874 dead soldiers. The president has not attended a single war funeral. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski has been to the funeral of every Oregon soldier from this war.

Mr. Bush has always prevailed by changing the subject. When Sen. John McCain threatened him by winning the New Hampshire primary, Bush generated a whispering campaign that questioned McCain’s emotional stability. When Bush needed Georgia, he questioned the patriotism of Vietnam War amputee Sen. Max Cleland and got him defeated. In the election of 2004, the big issue was not the war, but homosexuality.

Long after George W. Bush has gone to a cosseted retirement, America will reckon with its disillusionment with the Iraq War. If Vietnam and World War I are a guide, there will be no easy reconciliation with the facts.

– S.A.F.