War blurs lines between good, evil

ANDREW GREELEY

_T hey have rededicated the
Lady Church (Frauenkirche)
in Dresden. This baroque
gem from the 1700s was des-
troyed -- along with much of
the city and 130,000 lives -- by
Royal Air Force bombers in
February 1945, two months before
the end of the war. This rededica-
tion comes as Germans ask whether
they do not have the right to mourn
their losses during the war --
600,000 civilians killed by the planes
of Air Marshal Arthur "Bomber"
Harris, also called "Butcher" by his
RAF colleagues.
I fail to see how anyone can deny
them that right, especially since re-
search after the war demonstrated
that the mass firebombing of Ger-
man cities had no impact on the final
outcome. The Germans started the
war, it has been argued, and there-
fore they were to blame for what
happened to them. The children who
were killed in Dresden or in the fire
storms in Hamburg were guilty? Or
in the American fire raids in
Japan?
I'm sorry, I can't buy that kind of
moral reasoning. Collective guilt is
a murky and messy concept, satis-
fying as rhetoric but dangerous in
practice. The same logic would ar-
gue that, because Israel took land
from Palestinians, suicide bombers
are morally justified in indiscrimi- nate murder of Israeli citizens.
The raid on Dresden was uncon-
scionable. There were no military
targets there worth the destruction
of the city. Winston Churchill is al-
leged to have approved the raid be-
cause of pressure from Stalin. He
certainly approved of Bomber Har-
ris' systematic obliteration of Ger-
man cities. Both of them should
have been subject to war crime tri-
als at the end of the war, just as
were the German leaders. That the
latter were far more evil in their
deeds does not excuse the former.
However, only the victors try the
criminals, and they leave to history
any judgments about themselves.
The lesson of raids on places such
as Lubeck and Dresden is that even
in just wars, the side that has justice
on its side is likely to do many evil
things. War sucks everyone and
everything into its vortex of wicked-
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The side that has justice
on its side is likely to do
many evil things.

ness. The wars against Japan and
Germany were obviously necessary
wars and yet the victors (including
the United States) emerged with
bloody hands.
Moreover, wars are almost al-
ways longer than those who start
them think they will be. In 1914,
the German general staff predicted
victory in 90 days after mobiliza-
tion. The Confederacy thought
that a few military victories would
cause the Union to give up the
fight. The British thought they
could restore order in the rebel-
lious colonies in a couple of
months. Napoleon and Hitler both
were confident they could knock
over Russia in a single campaign.
President Bush celebrated "Mis-
sion Accomplished" after a few
weeks. Now the majority of Ameri-
cans believe that he does not tell
them the truth.
When good does evil to fight
evil, it becomes -- in T.S. Eliot's
words -- indistinguishable from
the evil it is fighting. War blurs the
lines between good and evil so they
are hard to recognize and traps
those who launch them in Big
Muddies of self-destruction.
Yet humankind still enters wars
with bursts of patriotism, self-con-
fidence and desire for vengeance
that blind populations to the risks
they are taking and cause leaders
to indulge in deception and -- per-
haps worse -- self-deception about
the terrible risks they are taking.
How could the leadership of this
country not realize that an ineffec-
tual war in Iraq would, instead of
advancing the "war against terror,"
actually generate new generations
of suicide bombers eager for, as the
film title says, ''paradise now''?
How could so many members of
Congress and American voters be so
influenced by the pseudo-patriotism
stirred up in the wake of the World
Trade Center attack that they
would eagerly and enthusiastically
rush into another Big Muddy? Even
though "regime change" in Iraq
might itself have been a good cause,
why were there so many who did not
realize the lesson of history that the
war would be long and costly and ul-
timately pointless? And worse still
lead the country down the path to
torture and murder, which go
against all the nation's ideals?
Why were there so few who said,
"Hey, wait a minute! What are the
risks? How long will it last?"

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War blurs lines between good, evil

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