If U.S. Opts to Go It Alone in Postwar Iraq, Instability Is Likely to Follow
Whatever President Bush was planning before the bullets began flying in Iraq, the nature of the war should change the nature of the peace.
By all indications, the administration has envisioned the reconstruction of Iraq as a predominantly, if not entirely, American production. But that plan was built on the assumption that the Iraqis would greet U.S. soldiers as liberators. Now it's clear that American forces face a more ambivalent reception: welcome in some quarters, fierce resistance in others.
While most Iraqis probably won't be sorry to see Saddam Hussein deposed, war inevitably creates grievances. The coalition forces have made extraordinarily rapid progress. But they have been compelled to employ greater force than they originally hoped to defeat Hussein's military. That has meant more civil destruction and more civilian casualties -- a problem exacerbated by Iraqi tactics of intermixing their forces with civilians.
American and British forces, despite tragic exceptions, still look to be targeting carefully, although no one knows the exact number of civilian deaths. Using too little force could also increase the risk of postwar instability by allowing too much of the Republican Guard or Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary force to survive as the nucleus of a future terrorist or guerrilla movement.
But the fact remains that the more often Iraqis see U.S. weapons destroy a friend's home or kill a neighbor, the less likely they are to feel a lilt in their heart when they walk past an American with a gun after the war. The deaths of seven U.S. soldiers in two suicide car bombings since the war began ought to be a wake-up call that not everyone in the country will be enthusiastic about a lengthy U.S. stay.
"The longer the war lasts, the longer you have populations under siege, the less it is going to look [to the Iraqis] like a war of liberation, and the more it is going to look like a war against them," says Marina Ottaway, an expert on democracy-building at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. So, some analysts believe that as the war moves toward its endgame, Bush should consider a new rule of thumb: the more intense the fighting, the stronger the case for international participation in the reconstruction.
