To keep down the bran flakes, I snarl at and skip the WSJrnl editorial page each morning. But this caught my eye as registering a strong uptick in elite anxiety over suffering the same fate as other colonialists.
Randy
Wall Street Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
6/26/03
The War Isn't Over
The big news in Iraq isn't that weapons of mass destruction haven't yet been found, but that Professor Hilal al-Bayyati is leaving. The former prisoner and head of Iraq's National Computer Center, Mr. Bayyati told Patrick Tyler of the New York Times last week that he is abandoning his dream of rebuilding Iraq because he fears the return of Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party.
Better than many Americans, Iraqis like Mr. Bayyati know that the war isn't over. Large elements of Saddam's regime are still around, pursuing almost daily attacks of sabotage. Foreign jihadis are joining them, some of whom may well be allied with al Qaeda. This is the reason GIs continue to die, and it means the U.S. will have to make a much more forceful, systematic effort to kill and punish them if stability is going to be restored.
The first step is to stop underestimating the nature of the threat. The CIA keeps telling U.S. officials that there is no "organized" resistance, as if it needs to find some headquarters in a basement to prove it. When oil pipelines are being blown up, Iraqis who work with Americans are assassinated, and GIs are routinely ambushed, the prudent conclusion is that the attacks are organized until proven otherwise.
It's possible that this guerrilla strategy was part of Saddam's plan all along. Retired Marine Colonel Gary Anderson predicted much of what is now unfolding in the April 2 Washington Post. Saddam admires Ho Chi Minh and has studied the U.S. debacles in Lebanon and Somalia. Rather than confront the U.S. in a conventional fight they'd lose, the Baathists "seeded the urban and semi-urban population centers of the country with cadres designed to lead such a guerrilla movement."
This strategy would explain why the Baathists didn't use chemical weapons; the act would have turned the world irreparably against them. The major fighting also ended before U.S. troops swept into the Sunni areas north of Baghdad, where two Republican Guard divisions were able to blend into the population. Now the Baathists can maintain hope of outlasting the Americans, who they assume will grow tired of taking casualties and turn Iraq over to the U.N.
We aren't saying that Iraq is now like Algeria under the French, much less Somalia. The Shiite areas have been far less restive than the Sunni heartland, notwithstanding the attack on British troops this week. Electricity is coming back, commerce is being restored and order in Baghdad is far better than it was a month ago. But the longer we refuse to take the Baathist threat seriously, the more we run the risk that Iraq could become an Algeria.....