Rupert Cornwell: The big dilemma: use decisive force or fight humanely

Wednesday 26 March 2003 20:00 EST
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This war may yet be over within two or three weeks. But enough has happened already to show how America and Britain may be undermined by conflicting goals – the short-term demands of battle and their longer term aspirations for the future of Iraq used to justify the war in the first place.

Pulling in one direction is George Bush's promise to use decisive force to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime as quickly as possible. Tugging in the other is the importance of making this "pre-emptive strike" (in plain English, unprovoked invasion) as "humane" and non-destructive as possible for all Iraqis except the leader and his immediate followers.

This is a queasy moment in Washington. The heady expectation that the regime would collapse in a few days, at the first taste of America's power, has vanished. So have hopes that Iraqi commanders would cross sides en masse. So, too, has the notion, fed by the neo-conservatives whose brainchild this war is, that the grateful inhabitants of southern Iraq would be strewing rose petals before the advancing tanks.

Public opinion reflects the bleaker mood. One poll yesterday found only 38 per cent thought the war was going well. The latest New York Times/ CBS survey found 62 per cent thought it would be "several months" before the war was over, up from 40 per cent two days before. Admittedly, the blanket coverage of the conflict, complete with the "embedded" correspondents, makes it seem it has being going on for ever.

But Americans are an impatient people. They have been led to believe by their leaders that the end would be quick (Vice-President Dick Cheney was on television on 16 March, three days before the war began, predicting the Republican Guard would lay down their arms without a fight); and they expect it to be quick.

The armchair generals (retired) who do the play-by-play in the television studios and the newspapers are already starting to murmur. Donald Rumsfeld, they suggest, is wrong in his belief that a new model of warfare, using fewer traditional forces and relying on special forces and "shock and awe" air power, was the best and quickest way to defeat President Saddam.

Take General Barry McCaffrey, who commanded a mechanised infantry division in the 1991 Gulf War. He told The Washington Post that the US should have opened the drive to Baghdad with two, not one, heavy armoured divisions. He worried about extended, under-protected supply lines, and the fortnight – at least – before the 4th Infantry Division arrive as reinforcements. Even General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme commander in the Kosovo campaign, has said he would have liked a "greater insurance policy".

Now, those fears may well be as groundless as similar doom-mongerings over Afghanistan, and Kosovo – which were followed by the swift collapse of the enemy, leaving the fainthearts looking foolish. Maybe this campaign is on schedule, as Mr Bush asserts. Worst-case scenarios – the mass torching of oilfields or a missile attack on Israel – haven't happened and are unlikely to. Just a week into the war, forward US units are already engaging the crack Medina division of the Republican Guard close to Baghdad.

As for the lack of popular joy, that may indeed reflect the fact, as General Tommy Franks claimed on Monday, that President Saddam's grip is still fearsome enough to cow rebellious inhabitants of Basra.

But Basra exemplifies the problem of conflicting goals. British forces would like to move in to finish off the resistance but they cannot for fear of provoking the civilian casualties that the entire campaign is designed to avoid. The longer they hold off, the suffering inside the city, the anger of public opinion at America and Britain, not to mention the impatience at home, will only grow.

The President said at the Pentagon on Tuesday: "Soon Iraqis will see the great compassion of the US and the world." The longer Iraqis see just the military might of the US, the harder it will be for compassion to generate goodwill later.

But if the Americans go for the quick win, they will have to go for contentious targets. Iraqi television has already been hit. Will it be power stations, generators next?

And one final concern. Have the US optimists underestimated the nationalism card? President Saddam spoke the other day of Iraq's "sacred land" and the "great people" who defended it. His words brought to mind Stalin's radio address after the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941.

Stalin's rule – purges, repression and deliberate famine – was as brutal and detested in his country as President Saddam's is today. But Stalin pitched his appeal as leader not of the Communist Soviet Union, but of eternal Russia. He referred not to "comrades" but to his "brothers and sisters".

It proved a trump card for Stalin, and President Saddam (a great admirer) is trying the same thing. That does not necessarily mean the war will climax in a Stalingrad-like siege and still less does it mean the Allies will go the way of the Nazi invader. It simply means that Iraqis, whatever they think of their leader, don't like being invaded as much as we thought they would – even when they are invaded "humanely", in the name of "liberation".

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