The Guns of March by Pete Hamill, New York Daily News 03-02-2003 Plans to invade Iraq bear an eerie resemblance to the origins of WWI The war with Iraq now seems almost certain. Even the gray city weather, filled with the threat of winter storms, seems to express the hopeless mood. The killing and the dying are right ahead of us, and there seems to be little we can do about it. A great unraveling of the world could be upon us, and if you are of a certain age, you recognize once again a big sad truth: Nobody ever learns anything. Or, to make a qualification, no men of power ever learn anything. In the wan hope that it is not yet too late, I suggest that all concerned hole up with a very good book called "The Guns of August," by Barbara Tuchman. This book is more than 40 years old and still in print, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history and an essential volume in the endless tale of human folly. Tuchman tells how, in August 1914, a handful of men hurled the world into the Great War (later renamed World War I) and brought on all the horrors of the 20th century. The story is filled with idiots: kings, generals, diplomats. It is driven by German arrogance, the French need to expunge the humiliation of 1870, Russia's need to recover from losing a war to tiny Japan and British fear of German domination of Europe and its hunger for its own colonies in Africa and elsewhere. All the leaders were surrounded by bootlickers or ideologues. All were convinced of their own virtue. The immediate trigger, of course, was the double assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife on June 28, 1914. The killer was a Serb terrorist. The senile Austrian-Hungarian empire used this event as a pretext for taking over Serbia, and within days, the beplumed fools of Europe and Russia were choosing sides. With a great sense of detail and the inevitability of Greek tragedy, Tuchman tells the story of how this minor event drew so many countries into the conflict through the creation of various coalitions of the willing or because of ententes — understandings — that had been made by rulers. "In the month of August 1914," Tuchman wrote, "there was something looming, inescapable, universal, that involved us all. Something in that awful gulf between perfect plans and fallible men that makes one tremble with a sense of ‘There but for the grace of God go we.'" France and Germany had been working on their war plans for years. Both were based on the need for a massive offensive, Germany coming down through neutral Belgium, France driving toward the Rhine. The British would come in on the side of France once Belgium's neutrality was violated by the Germans (it was). Each set of generals was convinced that the war would last about six weeks. Most were convinced that in the age of advanced technology — the machine gun — a long war would be impossible. "You will be home," said Kaiser Wilhelm to some of his troops in the first weeks of August, "before the leaves have fallen from the trees." He was certain his plans would work. After all, they had been refined for more than a decade. "The plan of campaign," Tuchman writes, "was as rigid and complete as the blueprint for a battleship." In the same years, the British and French also were perfecting their plans. Writes Tuchman: "By the spring of 1914, the joint work of the French and British general staffs was complete to the last billet of every battalion. Even to the places where they were to drink their coffee." The endless stories of the past few months about the Pentagon's plans for demolishing Iraq have that same eerie sense of men becoming prisoners of their own certainties. Other fragments of 1914 have a familiar ring. Here is the kaiser speaking: "Whoever in the case of a European war was not with me was against me." Here is Tuchman on the German view of themselves: "Believing themselves superior in soul, in strength, in energy, industry and national virtue, Germans felt they deserved the dominion of Europe." And here is Tuchman describing young Czar Nicholas, a handsome man who, "lacking the intellect, energy or training for his job, fell back on personal favorites, whim, simple mulishness and other devices of the empty-headed autocrat." The Great War was not over in six weeks, of course; it dragged on for four years. There were roughly 13 million battlefield deaths. France alone had 1.4 million dead, which helped lead to the collapse of 1940 and partially explains French caution today about an impulsive war with Iraq. Another 34 million men were wounded or gassed, many crippled for life. The U.S. had 50,585 dead, 205,690 wounded. About 6.6 million civilians were killed, 2 million of them Russians, 2.1 million Turks or Armenians. None of these numbers were in the oh-so-perfect pre-war plans. And there were postwar consequences. Before the Great War was over, the Bolsheviks had shot their way to power and created the Soviet Union. The Russian, Austrian-Hungarian and Ottoman empires vanished, to be rearranged after the war by British and French statesmen with maps and rulers. One country they invented was Iraq. In the aftermath, Mussolini and Hitler began their malignant postwar rise, and up ahead lay the Holocaust, another world war, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam. All flowed from August 1914, when respectable, self-righteous men went so easily to war, wrapped in flags and the platitudes of national honor. August 1914 and the war against Saddam Hussein can't be truly compared, of course, since no war is exactly like any other war. But Tuchman's great book contains a universal lesson that must never be forgotten: Wars have consequences that cannot be predicted. Right up the road lies Iraq. This should be a quick, ferocious and certain victory. But after the victory, the true war might begin all over the planet, including here in our own tough city. I watched the President the other night as he offered his sunny vision of leading a conquered Iraq into a new age of Pericles. The performance was astonishing. The tough guy sheriff was recasting himself into that ancient figure of Republican contempt: the do-gooder. Reality seemed to have slipped away forever, and I wished that the President would go home and start reading "The Guns of August." Originally published on March 1, 2003