The price of victory

Jordan Times, 3/27/03

THE FIRST week of war has passed, and it has been exactly what all sensible, peace-loving people feared.

Iraqi civilian casualties are already well in the hundreds.

The war promises to be much longer, bloodier and destabilising than expected.

Like in all conflicts, misinformation is being generously used by both sides in a bid to win the propaganda war.

For almost everyone, this war is extremely difficult to follow.

But one widespread impression is clearly emerging and gaining ground: The fortress of US certainty is turning more and more into a castle of cards, as the first doubts are being loudly cast over a US victory.

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was quoted yesterday as saying the US doesn't have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war.

According to Ritter, US-British forces might win some tactical battles “as we did for 10 years in Vietnam, but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost.”

President George W. Bush has already lost the war, indeed.

He lost it when he decided to go ahead without a UN mandate, thus dealing a blow to the very foundations of international legitimacy.

He lost it with the first civilian casualty, which reminded the world that innocent people die in every war.

He lost it when one of his Marines was filmed raising the US flag on Iraqi soil, dissipating every Arab doubt over Washington's real intentions in Iraq and the region.

He lost it again yesterday, when it became even more apparent — as if needed — that “surgical wars” don't exist, and that the US is now bombing apartment buildings and marketplaces in a desperate attempt to take Baghdad.

Bush has been preparing for this war for so long that it is both inconceivable and ironical how miserably all his preparations have failed.

Turkey's refusal to allow the use of its bases, for a start, will haunt Washington's strategists and policy makers for generations to come. One would have thought that, having mulled over this war since the minute he took office, the leader of the world's sole superpower would have at least managed to secure that his troops could count on the strategic “northern front.”

Granted that things never go according to plan in any case, and especially in wars, it is still shocking how gross a miscalculation the Bush administration has made on the resistance that its troops would have encountered in Iraq.

Now, tactical victories on the ground will come only at the prohibitive price of huge civilian casualties. It is a price that Washington cannot afford, but that it will have to pay.

A victory at the price of massacres is a defeat.

As Ritter said, the US has already lost, in either case.