The United States is now heavily involved in a difficult war. The Iraq conflict has showed itself likely to be longer and costlier in lives and money than had initially been estimated. It is also a war that the United States cannot afford to lose without greatly modifying its own concept of its role in the 21st-century world.
In trying to make sense of this war, which the United States has been prosecuting for more than 10 days now, it is important not to draw large conclusions from morsels of information, including those coming from the front.
At the same time, although it is unlikely to become clear for some time what the initial Defense Department forecasts were of how long it would take to defeat Iraqi forces and take Baghdad, the current situation suggests a conflict of many weeks at the least. U.S. and British forces are bogged down to a degree, still on the road to Baghdad due to a number of factors, some of them based on incorrect assumptions.
For the most part the Iraqis are not welcoming the Americans and British as liberators, but seem to see them instead as foreign invaders. Iraqi regular and irregular forces are fighting -- harassing and resisting U.S. forces. As a result, those spearheading the attack on Baghdad find themselves at the forward end of a vital 300-mile supply train, vulnerable to Iraqi attack along its length. Baghdad and other Iraqi targets are being pounded by bombing, but the aerial attack has not yet significantly reduced Iraqi forces' will or ability to resist.
It is thus clear that more U.S. forces will be required. Reports are that another 120,000 are on the way to the theater, an increase of nearly 50 percent over the current level of 250,000 in and around Iraq.
Comparison with the incremental U.S. buildup in Vietnam during the war there is inevitable. What is different is that this increase in U.S. forces in theater is taking place at 2003 speed rather than at the pace of the 1960s. This accelerated reinforcement could definitely make a difference in the outcome. There are other important differences, of course. In Vietnam the United States was seeking to preserve in power an already existing, recognized but threatened regime. In Iraq it aims to remove a government and existing order.
The Vietnam War took place during the Cold War, when every conflict in the world had Communist vs. anti-Communist overtones. This one takes place with the United States in the situation of being generally considered to be the pre-eminent superpower in the world, a country whose will, it is considered, can ultimately be resisted successfully by almost no one, or at least not by a country like Iraq.
For that reason, as the United States is positioned now it cannot lose this war. If it does not succeed in reaching its objectives in Iraq, the displacement of Saddam Hussein's government and the disarmament of Iraq, America's primary claim to world dominance -- overwhelming military power -- will have been shown to be fictive, or overrated.
That kind of trimming of America's wings would force any U.S. administration into a more modest role on the world stage. The Bush administration, at least, will not accept such a diminished role. Therefore, the American people need now to brace themselves for a longer, costlier, more painful war than they had expected.
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