Iraq becoming ever-bigger testing ground for U.S. resolve
WASHINGTON (AP) — Iraq was already a testing ground for American resolve, and now the gruesome deaths of four American civilians have raised the stakes. The public may rally around President Bush in the short term, as often happens with attacks abroad, but the assault also intensifies pressures on him to stabilize a still unruly country.
Graphic images of the mutilation of the Americans in Fallujah reinforced what the statistics were showing: Attacks on civilians are on the rise and lawlessness still reigns in many areas of the country.
The pictures recalled Somalia in 1993, when 18 U.S. servicemen were killed and corpses were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Those horrifying images led President Clinton to withdraw U.S. forces.
Bush could face similar pressure now, made more intense by a presidential campaign in which his Iraq policy is a major issue.
But his options are not as clear-cut as Clinton’s. “Somalia was a terrible situation, but we could walk away,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The United States was in Somalia as part of a humanitarian effort and had little or no strategic interests in the impoverished African nation.
A hasty retreat from Iraq — before a new government and effective security force is in place — could lead to civil war, open up new safe havens for terrorist groups and lead to further instability in the Middle East.
“We can’t leave because there will be civil war. But we can’t stay because we’re going to continue to be subject to devastating attacks. It’s a disaster in the making, unfolding before our eyes,” said Benjamin Barber, professor of civil society at the University of Maryland.
Afghanistan proves how hard it is to restore stability.
Some 2 1/2 years after the fall of the Taliban and despite installation of a pro-Western government, much of the country is controlled by warlords with their own private armies. Recent fierce fighting around Herat has highlighted the slow process of building a new national army and police force.
Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, is part of Iraq’s so-called Sunni Triangle, a region where many remain loyal to Saddam Hussein, a Sunni himself, and where resentment toward the United States runs particularly high.
Securing only parts of Iraq, while allowing Sunni Triangle towns and other regions to remain relatively lawless — as in the Afghanistan model — is not a real option because of the proximity to Baghdad and other vital interests, including control of Iraq’s vast oil fields, analysts suggest.
Sunni militants have also violently attacked Iraqi Shiites and Kurds ahead of the planned June 30 transfer of civilian power to Iraqis.
“When you talk about, can you protect everyone in Iraq, remember one of the worst things you can do is be trapped into a defensive structure where everybody has to be protected all the time,” said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
So far, the administration and its congressional allies have not had to cut and run. “That’s not going to happen here,” said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.
“We have looked into the eyes of the Iraqi people. We have shaken their hands. We have heard them speak,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence who recently visited Iraq. “This is not easy. And there are going to be other ugly days and other ugly events. This takes work.”
But analysts also recall that President Reagan at first vowed not to be swayed by the October 1983 suicide bomb that killed 241 servicemen in the Marine barracks in Beirut — only to bow to public opinion and pull U.S. forces out of Lebanon.
With attacks like those in Fallujah against Americans, “we rally around our leaders,” said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University. “At the same time, people will increasingly be asking, `Why should we be there when the people don’t seem to want us there?'”
Nobody knows how much more violence in Iraq Americans can tolerate before opposition escalates sharply as it eventually did over U.S. troops in Vietnam. But polls show support for the war to be slowly eroding.
People were about evenly divided on Bush’s handling of Iraq in a Los Angeles Times poll out Thursday, with 49 percent saying they approve and 46 percent saying they disapprove. At the time of the war, about seven in 10 said they approved of his handling of the Iraq situation.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.