Arab News Editorial

Shortly before Saddam’s statue in the heart of Baghdad was brought crashing to the ground, the Americans made the first of a string of elementary mistakes which now, a year later, finds the smiling liberators transformed into grim-faced occupiers. It was a simple error. While US troops assisted Iraqis in getting a hawser round the statue’s neck, a single American soldier secured the Stars and Stripes around the head. The man who did it no doubt felt that he had fought his way to the dictator’s capital and deserved to express his triumph in this way. It was not long before an officer ordered the flag removed, but the damage had been done. Iraqis had already been given grounds to suspect that this victory had not been won for them, as the invading soldiers claimed, but for the advancement of US power over Iraqi oil and the region as a whole.

Maybe if, as they began their work a year ago, top officials in the Provisional Authority had done some urgent analysis of the problems they faced and the perceptions and suspicions that they had to overcome, it might have been different. But the Bush White House reckoned it already knew all the answers. It did not want to listen to any new ideas, whether they came from America’s friends in the region, from Arabists in the State Department or from knowledgeable officials on the ground.

The result has been a policy of almost bovine stupidity. Once they had conquered Iraq, the hunters in the US-led forces became the hunted. US commanders could not control the violence. Because they failed to win hearts and minds, their intelligence has never been sufficient to let them intercept and interdict attackers.

Error has compounded error, culminating in Washington committing itself last week to a deadly fight with the Sunni resistance in Fallujah and another bloody battle with the militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr. The fighting hugely raised the profile of this formerly marginal religious leader. And the US did both these things without consulting the Iraqi Governing Council, which is due to take power in just over two months time.

There is mounting evidence that Washington’s principal ally, Britain, is incensed at this incompetence. For several days no British minister would comment on the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Now they are speaking through clenched teeth. When Tony Blair meets George W. Bush next Friday, the British premier is likely to complain about the serious shortcomings in US tactics and underlying policy. If Bush were to lose British support, the Coalition’s image would be severely damaged and the president’s own domestic standing seriously weakened. Yet could a radical change of US tactics in Iraq now be seen as anything other than a further defeat?