April 2, 2003

In This Issue

PAUL VALLELY, a reporter for the Independent of London, has an interesting analysis of the way the war in Iraq is going. U.S. and British troops, he noted, are in a state of high alarm over the suicide car bombing that killed four soldiers Saturday. They worry, commanders say, that Iraqi troops could launch attacks from ambulances, or after pretending to surrender.

"The problem," Vallely wrote, "is that regarding every woman on a donkey as a potential threat from now on is not likely to do much in the battle for Iraqi hearts and minds."

In fact, just the opposite is happening. Former United Nations secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali issued a statement this week warning that the war was strengthening Islamic fundamentalism. "The war corresponds to the dialectic of the fundamentalist, who says there is a crusade against the Islamic world," he noted.

Robert Fisk goes further. As he reports on page 20, President George W. Bush has done something nobody else in the world has been able to do: he's turned Saddam Hussein, a nearly universally despised tyrant, into a martyr.

The bottom line: Just about everything is going wrong with this war, and it doesn't look like it's going to get much better anytime soon. Iraq is becoming the new Vietnam.

You have to wonder what the geniuses in the White House and the Pentagon were thinking. Did they really believe the Iraqi people would welcome U.S. troops as "liberators?" Did they really think Saddam would send his soldiers to fight the much better-equipped invaders in traditional open battlefields, where high-tech weapons and air power would be a decisive factor? Doesn't anyone in Washington remember what happened the last time the United States sent this many troops into battle under rough conditions in a hostile country?

Do they think now that they can bomb Iraq into submission by leveling large parts of Baghdad – and then somehow install "democracy" in that country?

Do the executives of all of those oil companies that want to take over Iraq's wells have any idea how hard it will be to operate in a country that will remain a war zone for a long time to come?

There are no good or easy occupations – and this one is going to be really, really bad. Because even if the United States wins the war – and ultimately, that will be the outcome – we're not going to win the peace.