D-Day: 60Th Anniversary: The Greatest Day

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When Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers paid a surprise visit to Baghdad, the general quoted Senator Ted Stevens in his effort to lift today's soldiers into that hallowed company. "They've written about the World War II generation as being the greatest generation. But he said it's this generation right now that is the next greatest generation." Some soldiers, however, wonder whether he was telling them the truth or just what he thought they want to hear. Dispatched to Kuwait and waiting for the signal to invade in the winter of 2003, soldiers who heard about the millions of antiwar marchers in the streets wondered how they would be viewed when they came home. In the midst of the prison-abuse scandal, the concern emerges again. "Now we wonder what people back home think of us," a young officer in Karbala told the New York Times last week. "Will it be like Vietnam, where everyone who's fought there is labeled a baby killer?" If nothing else, Vietnam taught us the price of fighting wars whose original noble purpose itself becomes a casualty.

But the reactions then and since suggest the soldiers needn't worry. If many Americans of a certain age feel guilt about their failure to separate their opposition to the Vietnam War from the men who fought it, they have been determined ever since not to repeat that error. Sympathy for the soldiers is acute, even as opinion about the present war still divides and doubts begin to conquer even former supporters. Respect for the troops is the one thing Americans have in common when nothing else can be shared. Far from bringing shame on all soldiers, the Abu Ghraib scandal elicits fury on behalf of the thousands of soldiers whose lives just became harder. People are aware of the holidays missed and the family occasions postponed as tours are extended, and the only thing certain is that nothing about this war is certain.

It took less than a year after Dday to end that long war in Europe; we are now more than a year into the conflict in Iraq and have yet to pacify that country. The U.S. is divided at home and beleaguered abroad, and the continued fortitude of Americans on the ground in Iraq is all the more inspiring because the prospects of success seem to grow fainter in spite of their efforts.

For a war to be good, it must also be necessary, and it must be won; there is small solace in a glorious defeat. So while America presses ahead toward a vision of a new Iraq arising out of all that darkness, we're not even sure if the war has ended yet or when it will and whether we'll even recognize victory if we see it. Some have argued that Iraq's national pride and hope of moving forward depends on doing this themselves, on not having it done for them. We may want to give this great gift of freedom, but in the giving, the value is lost; it must be taken, won, earned. And so our victory can come only as a result of theirs.