Why Is Iraq War Suddenly “A Tough Fight”?

"One week after the United
States unleashed its military campaign to drive Saddam
Hussein from power," the New York Times
reported in a front-page story last Thursday,

"the
war has become a tough fight. The air campaign that the
Pentagon promised would `shock and awe` Saddam Hussein`s
government appears to have done neither. Mr. Hussein has
not lost his grip on power and the Iraqi military`s
command and control system is still intact."

(“Allies
Adapt to Setbacks” by Michael R. Gordon, New York
Times, March 27, 2003)

Is this just the whining of

liberal fifth-column journalists like what we had to
endure throughout much of the

Vietnam War (which is how many hawks are trying to
interpret it)?

Or is it for real—that the Bush
administration, the Defense Department and the
intelligence community have blown it, committing this
country to an open-ended war in a strange and distant
country where we really have no business against an
enemy far more able and determined than we thought?

My guess (it`s not really a guess
but an analysis) is the latter—U.S. troops in Iraq,
while far from facing defeat or disaster, are not
enjoying the "cakewalk" to Baghdad that neo-conservative
Likudnik Ken Adelman

predicted more than a year ago. The Iraqis are not
collapsing "at the first whiff of gunpowder," as
neo-conservative Likudnik Richard Perle boasted

last summer. The Iraqi people apparently do not
"view us as their hoped-for liberator," as
neo-conservative Likudnik Paul Wolfowitz

claimed only a week before the war started.

The Times is not alone in
warning of a far tougher war than the administration`s
hawks predicted or than most Americans wanted. The
Washington Post the same day

reported on its front page that "some senior U.S.
military officers" (soldiers, not armchair chicken
hawks like the Likudniks) "are now convinced the war
is likely to last for months and will require
considerably more combat power than is now on hand there
and in Kuwait."

The

Likudniks don`t like this one little bit. Bill
Kristol, editor of the chief Likudnik organ in the
United States, the Weekly Standard, whines that
the Post article

"comes close to being disgraceful." No doubt it`s also "anti-Semitic," like
every other criticism the neo-cons encounter.

But the fact is that controlling
40 percent of Iraqi territory and 95 percent of Iraqi
airspace doesn`t help that much. The real battle will be
for Baghdad, and though U.S. troops are within 50 miles
of the city, it`s defended by Hussein`s Republican
Guard. Under attack, the Guard can withdraw into the
city and wage urban warfare against our troops. The
casualties could multiply; the conflict could indeed
take months.

Of course the Likudniks don`t care
about American casualties very much. As neo-conservative
Likudnik Michael Ledeen, who

advocates a U.S.

war against virtually every Arab country in the
Middle East, told the

Post
this weekend, "I think the level of casualties is
secondary."

Right; the point is to wipe out
Israel`s enemies. Who cares how many dead Americans it
takes?

Yet aside from the propaganda,
disinformation and outright lies we were told about this
war, many may also have swallowed a good many more or
less typically American misconceptions about societies
like that of Iraq and about human nature itself.

Misconception No. 1 is that
Hussein`s regime is based entirely on fear—of him and
his secret police—and that once the G.I.`s toss out the
lollipops to the natives, the people would revolt and
democracy would reign. The truth is that Hussein may
well enjoy more popular support than we imagined, that
lots of Iraqis are less afraid of him than of other
Iraqis of different tribal, ethnic or religious
persuasions getting power, and that most people will
fight an invasion by a foreign power whom they see as an
aggressor. Iraq today is simply not France of 1944.

Misconception No. 2 is that
American military and communications technology will win
the war easily. Eventually they probably will, but
centuries ago

Niccolo Machiavelli warned that the new-fangled
artillery all the kings of Europe were drooling over
would not by itself in the long run protect them. Fancy
new technologies, this most cynical of political
thinkers

knew, were never adequate substitutes for the real
roots of victory and national survival: discipline,
loyalty, courage.

Americans, and especially those
doing the real fighting, still have

plenty of those virtues, even if their leaders could
use a good dose.

But the Iraqis seem to have their
own share as well, which is the main reason this war has
suddenly become a "tough fight" and may get tougher
still before it`s over.

If we`re going to win the victory
our troops deserve, we need not only those virtues
ourselves but to rid our minds of a good many lies and
illusions that helped get into this war in the first
place.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

[Sam Francis [email
him] is a nationally syndicated columnist. A selection
of his columns,

America Extinguished: Mass Immigration And The
Disintegration Of American Culture, is now available
from

Americans For Immigration Control.]