U.S. Is Its Own Worst Enemy in Iraq

So far this month, more than 450 Iraqis and dozens of U.S. troops have been killed by an Iraqi insurgency that, even after two years, shows signs of intensifying. Yet the Bush administration, which originally expected U.S. troops to be greeted as liberators and then promised that elections would fatally undermine the rebel cause, remains clueless as to the composition of this virulent enemy.

"The Mystery of the Insurgency" was the headline on a Sunday New York Times article reporting on the consensus of U.S. guerrilla warfare experts that the insurgents' motives and actions are simply baffling. However, "it clearly makes sense to the people who are doing it," said defense analyst Loren B. Thompson. "And that more than anything else tells us how little we understand the region."

What we do know about the region is that elements from two formerly implacably opposed forces -- secular pan-Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism -- have come to be unified, at least temporarily, in their hatred of the U.S. occupation of the historical center of the Arab world. That foreboding alliance is a direct consequence of a White House policy based on willful ignorance of history.

To avenge the 9/11 attack by some of the region's Muslim fanatics, led by Osama bin Laden, President Bush lashed out at the secular regime of Saddam Hussein despite two crucial facts: There was no evidence linking Hussein with Bin Laden, and the two were sworn enemies.

As the head of British foreign intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair seven months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush was obsessed with overthrowing Hussein, and so "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." That's when the great WMD hoax was launched. But "the case was thin," summarized the notes taken by a British national security aide at the meeting and released earlier this month. "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Nevertheless, thousands of lives and billions of dollars have been spent deposing a defanged dictatorship that posed no immediate threat to the U.S., creating a terrorist jungle in its place. We can describe the situation in Iraq today as "mission accomplished" only if our goal was to unite fanatical Islamic jihadis with their longtime enemies, the secular nationalist Baathists.