VICKSBURG - One more clause needs to be tacked onto that adage about the purpose of a military force being to kill people and break things. The U.S. Army, at least, also puts things back together.
Depending on my ability to navigate several pretty big airports and several stacks of forms, my next few columns will be written from Baghdad and other cities in Iraq.
Mississippi and Mississippians, especially those with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have played key roles in what is now year three - and perhaps the last year - of an intensive building and rebuilding effort. That's what I plan to be writing about.
Actually, the word "intensive" is something of an understatement.
A list might help: 839 schools, 158 clinics, 29 hospitals, 332 water systems, 264 border posts, 323 police stations, 58 military bases, 470 electrical stations, 107 village roads, 98 rail stations, 92 fire stations, 132 oil-related projects and more than 200 listed as "other."
Officially, the U.S. share for all this is listed at $18.4 billion, but that figure - nearly double the latest aid package approved by Congress for this state's Katrina-wracked Gulf Coast - is probably little more than a guess.
The argument against such spending is familiar: There are places in the United States that need schools, water systems, hospitals and fire stations, too.
But history counters that it does little good to win a war unless the peace is won, too.
The Marshall Plan for Europe after World War II could be called a blueprint for what's going on in Iraq.
Vanishing the Axis powers would not be enough, Secretary of State George Marshall was convinced, unless the economic footing of Germany and all the nations of Western Europe could be re-established. There was more than ending human suffering at stake. The Soviet Union was being managed by a man named Joseph Stalin and his desire to extend his reach beyond the Eastern European nations he already controlled was palpable. A more powerful Soviet Union was not in America's interest.
So around-the-clock aid flights began and didn't stop until the people of the United States - cash-strapped after fighting a global war - had spent $13 billion extending economic and technical help.
Translated into today's dollars, the tab for the Marshall Plan would be $100 billion, or roughly 10 times the appropriation for work in Iraq.
So, having chosen to dethrone Saddam Hussein by force, just as Hitler was removed from power, the United States created a vacuum. Without stabilizing the country - as the Marshall Plan stabilized Europe - there's the likelihood, again, that hostile neighbors would move in and claim control.
The comparison is far from perfect. Iraq in 2006 is not the same as France in 1947. The history, climate and traditions are markedly different. The very approach to life is different.
One example: While scholars argue whether Egyptians started building pyramids in 2500 B.C. or 5000 B.C., there is no doubt that organized cities had already formed before either of those dates in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Also, a written language for history, math and accounting had been developed.
One more: Western nations point to the Magna Carta of 1215 A.D. as initiating our written laws in their present form. People of Mesopotamia, now Iraq, had a written code of laws 3,000 years before the Magna Carta.
The big difference, though, is the West started to follow a trail toward secular democracy and popular rule a few centuries ago. The East and Middle East remained tribal with monarchs or clerics calling the shots. Iraq is also a land with no national identity. Its borders were lines drawn on a map by external powers.
That's a glimpse of the setting for all this rebuilding which, of course, is also a cross-pollination of cultures.
The smaller picture is the people - the designers, the engineers, the craftsmen - who are going about the process of trying to give Iraq a better shot at maintaining its balance in the days and years to come.
Theirs is a story worth telling, and that's what I plan to try to do.
