Even though much of the DOD doublespeak is more than vaguely familiar to those of us over 50, it is no longer appropriate to use the analogy of the Vietnam War to mark wrong-way milestones in the Iraqi Civil War--there, I said it, if history ends up calling the guerrilla war now being waged throughout most of Iraq something other than that fine. Perhaps it will come to be known as the Iraqi Revolution, The Baath Rebellion, The Shiite Insurrection, The Foreign Fighters War of Attrition, whatever, and not the Iraqi Civil War, it does not matter much right now. What matters right now is that it IS A WAR--not just still a war--and it can't just keep skating on as it is, semantically and metaphysically convenient for the military P.R. handlers and newspaper editors as that thing that did not stop after bush told one and all that "major combat" was fini.
This Civil War is about who will rule a fractious Iraq in the long run--and the short run. The real question we really have to face is should we have a horse in this race now that "regime change" has been accomplished, albeit quite untidily? Because, as the few excerpts below from The New York Times starkly illustrates, this war is only getting worse. There aren't too many options when a "restricted" guerrilla war isn't going your way: Increase troop strength, widen your free fire zones, up the ante of military hardware you're willing to use, or, in this case, come home and wait a few years before diplomatically recognizing the winner or winners of the fight to fill the vacuum created by destroying one of the world's most evil tyrants.
None of those options are politically popular, I fully understand; but the consequences of sticking around until the bitter end is beginning to look like it could prove politically crippling to whichever party is in control of the White House as the mess gets messier and messier and the months and years roll by and the body count mounts. Perhaps someone should report what the American body count was in 1963 and early 1964 in that Southeast Asian country we should no longer use as a benchmark for the quagmire in Iraq. Although I just did; war, while it is still going on, is a slippery business to nail down with words:
The attacks were the most widespread in months, seeming to demonstrate the growing power of the insurgency and heightening the sense of uncertainty and chaos in the capital at a time when American forces have already ceded control to insurgents in a number of cities outside of Baghdad.
The Associated Press reported that the total death toll throughout the country for the day reached 59, citing the Health Ministry and local authorities. Nearly 200 people were wounded, more than half of those in Baghdad. ...
In Baghdad, American military helicopters fired at Iraqis who were scaling a burning American armored vehicle. It was unclear how many Iraqis were killed in the airstrike. At least one television journalist was confirmed dead, and photographs immediately after the strike showed a group of four men severely wounded or dead at the site. American military commanders said the helicopters were returning fire aimed at them from the ground.
American forces appear to be facing a guerrilla insurgency that is more sophisticated and more widespread than ever before. Last month, attacks on American forces reached their highest level since the war began, an average of 87 per day.
In an appearance on Sunday on the NBC News program "Meet The Press," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that the United States faced a "difficult time" in Iraq but had a plan to "bring it under control" before nationwide elections scheduled for January.
"It's not an impossible task," he said.
The violence, which began before dawn, all but paralyzed this country's capital city, where portions of several central highways were closed, and traffic slowed to a crawl. ...
As the mortar shells were still falling early this morning, a suicide bomber plowed into an American Bradley fighting vehicle on Haifa Street in central Baghdad, not far from the International Zone, the American military said. The vehicle was hit at 6:50 a.m. as it was traveling to the area to help American forces that had come under fire from insurgents there.
In all, six soldiers were wounded in the attack, including two crew members of the armored vehicle.
No Americans were killed, but the confusion that followed showed the difficult decisions commanders here face as they push ahead in this increasingly organized guerrilla war.
After the attack, fighters and gleeful onlookers scaled the burning armored vehicle, said Hassan Lazim, assistant security director at nearby Karkh Hospital who said he saw the scene. Reuters reported that several young men had hung a black banner of the Unity and Jihad militant group, believed to be linked to Al Qaeda, on the barrel of the Bradley's main gun.
Helicopters that flew in to protect the Bradley were then fired on from the ground and fired back, the military said in a statement, adding that the aircraft then destroyed the armored vehicle as well. The helicopters "fired upon the anti-Iraqi forces and the Bradley, preventing the loss of sensitive equipment and weapons." The military stressed that the helicopters had not fired indiscriminately into the crowd, but said, "An unknown number of insurgents and Iraq civilians were wounded or killed in the incident."
In the fighting before and after the attack on the Bradley, 13 people were killed and 61 were wounded, the Iraqi Health Ministry said. A journalist for the Arabiya television network and a 12-year-old girl were among the dead, hospital officials said.
Al Arabiya showed compelling images that followed the journalist, Mazen al-Tumeizi, as he stumbled away from the scene of the airstrikes, yelling, "I'm dying, I'm dying!" ...
The sheer number of attacks left Iraqis here with a deep feeling of rage and helplessness.
"What can we do?" said Khalaf Shalesh, who was standing by the hospital bed of one of the wounded police officers. "We want to help Iraqis. But this keeps happening."
Another man, whose son was seriously injured Saturday night in a neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad that is between an American base and an insurgent hide-out, expressed similar frustrations.
"Rockets come from one side and Americans are on the other," said the father, Hassan Hamid. "We're a poor neighborhood, and it's getting destroyed. We don't want to fight."
