• A day of horror
A day of horror
Some days, the images are too grotesque to look at, the sounds too profane to hear. Yet we can’t turn our heads.
March 31 was one of those days of horror in Iraq.
It’s impossible to comprehend the brutality of the thugs who killed four U.S. civilians, burned their bodies, dragged them through the streets of Fallujah and strung two corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
How can anyone begin to understand why a boy no older than 10 would grind his heel into the charred head of a corpse? “Where is Bush?” he shouted defiantly. “Let him come here and see this!”
Or why a crowd of 150 men shouted “Long live Islam” and “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great”) as they watched the corpses burn.
Or why men interviewed in the street the day after the murders said the Americans got what they had coming.
L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator, put it well when he said the attacks were an example of “the ongoing struggle between human dignity and barbarism.”
Unfortunately, the barbarians have a tactical advantage. A small band of terrorists in Iraq can disrupt progress toward democracy and dignity in the same way that suicide bombers and other terrorists constantly disrupt any progress toward peace in the Middle East.
Yet the immediate assessment of the gravity of the situation by U.S. commanders has been a bit unrealistic. Given the hideous nature of the murders, the remarks of Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt a few hours later seemed out of touch. “Despite an uptick in local engagements,” he said, “the overall area of operations remains relatively stable with negligible impact on the coalition’s ability to continue progress.”
Perhaps he was only expressing customary military stoicism in customary military jargon; wringing of hands and rending of garments hardly would be appropriate from a general. The general’s comments also reflect the U.S. military’s view that it is finishing off Saddam Hussein’s dead-enders.
But that assessment seemed at odds with the grisly Fallujah murders and the death of five Marines from a roadside bomb a few miles away. Three more Americans were wounded by a bomb in the vicinity Thursday. The number of American soldiers killed in Iraq in March – 48 – was the second highest number of casualties in any given month since the end of major combat.
Gen. Kimmitt promised an “overwhelming” response to the Fallujah murders. U.S. forces also must find a way to provide more security for Americans and Iraqi civilians. The reported slowness of Marines and Iraqi police to respond to the incident – several hours passed before either U.S. military or Iraqi law enforcement authorities arrived – cannot be reassuring to the many civilian contractors, foreign aid workers and Iraqis trying to rebuild the country.
President George W. Bush also needs an exit strategy. If he has not already contemplated the possibility, he must face the prospect at some point of having to pull out U.S. troops without having established a stable democracy in Iraq.
The deaths of four U.S. civilians wouldn’t seem to change the way Americans view the war. After all, almost 600 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq. But the visceral impact of the photographs and film footage of the deaths in Fallujah evoke a fight-or-flight response. To critics of the war, they may be a compelling reason to withdraw U.S. forces: If so many Iraqis oppose the occupation, why should we risk more American lives to help such Iraqis establish a democracy? But the same grim images may only harden the resolve of supporters of the war. Fallujah must not be another Mogadishu.
Regardless of one’s view of the war, the United States can’t leave precipitously; we would be abandoning Iraq to chaos and sending a signal that we run every time a mob drags an American through the streets. It would be obscene to invade a country, kill thousands of its people, lose hundreds of our own, and then run off without giving Iraqis at least a chance to build a nation that is free and stable.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
