When the Japanese were raping Nanking, or as German soldiers forced Jews onto freight trains destined for death camps, citizens back home fully supported their troops.

Did they have some variation of the yellow ribbon magnets that many Americans affix to their cars? Probably.

That blind, unquestioning allegiance was pivotal in making Axis evils possible. It validated and facilitated what was so horrendously being done.

George Bush’s aggression against Iraq -- totally unprovoked and without valid justification -- would be impossible for any honest person to substantively differentiate from either Hitler’s seizure of Poland, or the Imperial Japanese assault on China.

Glorifying claims notwithstanding, it’s exactly on the same, lied-about, pernicious level.

Part of why many millions of people around the world resisted the impending, misrepresented Iraq war well before it actually began is that they clearly understood it would inevitably result in criminal killings of innocent civilians such as occurred at Haditha.

Subjective nonsense, used as a bogus rationale for launching a gratuitous invasion that was certain to inflame Iraqi hatred for foreign occupiers, was bound to ultimately collide with objective reality.

Soldiers who’d been cynically duped into thinking their cause was virtuous, and who felt they'd be happily welcomed by the Iraqis, found no cheering crowds tossing flowers.

What they received, instead, was sniper fire, rocket-propelled grenades, and roadside bombs.

How could it have been otherwise? Bush attacked their proud homeland for oil-control and hegemony, not anything even remotely noble.

Our troops quickly discovered, as other dismayed Americans had done in Vietnam, that virtually everyone despised them and passionately wanted alien Christians from Kansas, Oregon, and South Carolina to go home.

Iraq, therefore, was a bewildering and psychologically painful, myth-shattering experience for young kids who’d grown up emphatically believing that their country, and its hyped cause, made them this planet’s “good guys.”

There’s nothing so difficult to deal with as learning that you’ve been living a lie.

The first reaction is almost desperate denial.

Rather than admit their own role in something completely wrong, many soldiers in this situation reacted negatively toward ordinary Iraqis.

“Bastards! We liberated you from Saddam, and you don’t even show appreciation!”

Gradually it sank in that the general populace supports the insurrection.

Toss in strong doses of dramatic cultural incompatibility, together with abundant fear and stress, plus crude, racist stereotyping about “ragheads” and “camel jockeys” that’s rife in basic training and beyond . . . and you have all the ingredients for indiscriminate, lethal volatility when an IED suddenly kills a favorite buddy.

There’s only one way to prevent this entirely predictable, disastrous phenomenon.

And that’s for America to never again send its military across other countries’ borders unless there’s a global consensus -- supported by incontrovertible evidence -- that doing so is something that saints, angels and, most importantly, the overwhelming majority of the affected nations’ citizens themselves, genuinely desire.

Liberating Paris to destroy fascism is an acceptable model.

Attacking the cradle of civilization for Wall Street’s greedy gain is not.

The former made heroes of GI Joe.

The latter, having already dealt body blows to America’s international standing and its final place in history, has made monsters of our “warrior” kids.

Some of them will have to do long years in prison for forgetting, or maybe never knowing in the first place, what the Nuremberg Tribunal was all about.

The worst travesty, however, is that key figures from the Bush administration and Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon hierarchy won’t join them behind bars.

Haditha and associated atrocities reveal the depraved bankruptcy of America’s Iraq purpose. It also shows that we can’t “support our troops” and remain consistent with Nuremberg precepts when the supported commit war crimes. It’s high time to remove those aiding-and-abetting yellow ribbons from our vehicles, and end this terrible war at once.

Maybe someday American soldiers will have to go into battle again.

It goes without saying, however, that all peaceful possibilities must be authentically exhausted before even a truly just conflict is begun. When no guns are fired, no one dies.

Talking things out is the cure for blowing things up, including noncombatant women and children.

Diplomacy, adhered to with a tenacious unwillingness to accept the bloody alternative, is the surest way to avoid atrocities.

Dennis Rahkonen of Superior, Wisconsin, has been writing for various progressive outlets since the ‘60s. He can be reached at dennisr@cp.duluth.mn.us.