Five Years Later, War Is Over (If You Want It)

The holiday season has long left a haunting aftertaste in my memory. I first remarked upon it in something I wrote five years ago this week. And half a decade later, it's still there.

It all begins 40 years ago, with a song. This is how I described it in 2006:

This holiday season has been haunted by a melody. John Lennon and Yoko Ono originally released "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" just before Christmas in 1971, at a time when the Vietnam War seemed likely never to end. Re-released in 1972, the record resonated with war-weary Americans who wanted the fighting to end. By then, the My Lai Massacre court martial and the Pentagon Papers had seeped into the public consciousness. Most Americans knew the war had to end, and end soon. Opinion polls showed support for the Vietnam War dropping to about 30% by mid-1971. That lack of support did not translate quickly into government action, though, since Congress wouldn't cut off funding for Vietnam combat operations until December 1974 (three years after "Happy Xmas" debuted).

Hearing the refrain "War is over/If you want it" wafting from the car radio in recent days has produced the same sort of melancholy it did on first hearing 35 years ago. I found myself pleading with John. "I want it," I cried. "I want it over! Tell me how!"

If you don't remember 1971, it's difficult to describe the gestalt of the times. Vietnam was not only a never ending horror, it was a never changing horror. Day after day, the carnage was reduced to recitations of "body counts" -- the number of dead on each side of the conflict, a statistical exercise that was as demeaning as it was deceptive. Into this atmosphere, Lennon's plaintive carol seemed to be a breath of fresh air. It was so simple -- war is over, if you want it. Millions of us wanted it. But the war did not end. It dragged on for years after "Happy Xmas" was released.

Five years ago, I was gripped by a similar melancholy. Another war seemed to be dragging on endlessly, and no matter what people of good will said or thought or did, there was no conclusion to it in sight. It was the war in Iraq, which the United States chose to start and had chosen not to stop. In fact, that year -- 2006 -- during the holiday season the United States decided to send even more troops to the quagmire. It seemed very much like 1971 all over again.

Today, almost unbelievably, that war is over. Far too late, and with far too much blood spilled and far too much money poured into the sand, the United States is no longer fighting a war in Iraq. U.S. troops are out of the country. What happens there now is the business of the Iraqis, not the U.S. government. That is as it should be -- and should have been all along. But even so late, it is welcome. Even five years after my desperate plea of "Tell me how!", I am gratified that no more Iraqi or American lives will be taken in my name and the name of my people. (Yes, there's still a war in Afghanistan, and yes, it's been dragging on far too long, but it seems there may be an end in sight for that one, too.)

Today, that song on the radio seems a little less wistful. The Iraq war is over. Yes, it went on too long and the cost was obscenely dear. But it's over now. It's over because people of good will wanted it to be. John Lennon was right all along.

Happy Christmas (War Is Over)!