Is Afghanistan the new Flanders Field?

• Author: Easterbrook, Gregg
• Position: TILTING at windmills

Thousands of American service members-and tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians--died as a result of U.S. attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. Fallujah, taken by U.S. Marines at terrible cost in 2004, was back in insurgent hands this year. Obama says most U.S. combat forces will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The certain result is that there, as in Iraq, the cities and towns that American soldiers died to liberate will return to the control of the very forces we wanted to oust. Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, a former Air Force pilot who flew missions above Iraq and Afghanistan, summed up the feeling of many when he said, "We owe it to the Americans who gave their lives for our cause" not to walk away. But do we, in fact, owe this debt to the dead?

The 1915 poem "In Flanders Field"--the most influential literary words since the lyrics to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"--helped convince Britons to support World War I. Written in the voice of those who fell at Ypres, it declares, "Take up our quarrel with the foe / To you from failing hands we throw the torch / If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep." This reasoning has been used to sustain bloodshed in many nations and...