Over 20 years ago, in 1983, a foreign military force arrived in a recently invaded Arab country promising to carry out humanitarian activities and protect the locals.

A truck bomb that killed 241 soldiers put an end to such high-mindedness.

As Japanese troops arrive in Iraq over the coming weeks at the beginning of what Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has called a "noble mission," it is worth remembering that if the war in Iraq has one thing in common with that attack on U.S. forces in Beirut, it is that there are no neutrals or noncombatants in a war zone.