Generosity Begins Only After the Battle : War: Before we stop the fighting, victory must be obvious and plain to all.

In 1918, after years of stalemate on the battlefield, the war-weary Allies accepted Germany’s offer of conditional surrender. Though a rout of German forces was imminent, the Allies chose to stop the fighting rather than prosecute the war until the bitter end. A relatively intact German army was allowed to “save face” and return home under its own auspices.

This generous gesture on the battlefield was followed by a petty performance at the official peace conference in Versailles. Bitter in victory, the Allies forced the Germans to accept all the guilt for starting the war. The victors assessed harsh reparations and then appropriated the very sources of wealth that Germany would need to make the payments.

The result was a victory at once too harsh and too soft. The impossible reparations assessed against Germany sowed seeds of resentment that were harvested by Hitler 15 years later. But the victory was also too mild, because it came before German forces had been unambiguously routed on the battlefield. Hitler rose to power in part because he was able to delude Germans about a political “stab in the back” in 1918, since the Allies had stopped fighting before the defeat was undeniably acknowledged by every German.

The temptation to repeat these mistakes is almost overwhelming. Critics will say further battlefield casualties (even minimum numbers) are unnecessary when a peace of sorts is available. And Iraq’s guilt is unambiguous and Iraqi war crimes revolting. Most civilized people would concede that Iraq owes Kuwait and the world a debt for what it has wrought.

But the temptation needs not be irresistible.

It is a paradox of international relations but one that has held over the centuries: Successful nations are neither compromising in battle nor vindictive in victory.

Magnanimity is a virtue only after victory is obvious and plain to all. Hitler rose to power because the Germans could nurse lingering doubts about how the war was lost. The Japanese could have no such illusions. The Iraqi people must not, either. They must not be left thinking that the war was a noble effort sabotaged by back-stabbing Arab brothers in a Zionist conspiracy; they must see it as it was, the tragic megalomania of a corrupt regime.

But they must also see justice tempered by mercy. The pitiful performance of Iraqi troops proves their claim that this was Saddam Hussein’s war. Disturbing sound-bites on the evening news from jingoistic Iraqis show that Hussein’s subjects cheered for their troops just as we cheer for ours.

In the end, however, the gambit and the tenacious stubbornness that drove this conflict belongs to the man at the top. So after this war is over, and after Hussein is gone (though the order is uncertain, surely one will follow the other), Iraq must be coaxed back into the family of responsible states. This might mean granting some previously unacceptable conditions, most likely on reparations. But it offers the best hope for long-term peace and stability in the region.