It is not always pleasing to be proved right. The Arab world spearheaded international protests in advance of the US-led invasion of Iraq. It warned Washington that while the military outcome could not be in doubt, the end-game occupation of this proud, sophisticated but long brutalized country was going to be far from easy.

And so it is proving. Elements of the old regime have killed 50 US servicemen in the eight weeks since the war ended. Meanwhile ordinary Iraqis are losing patience as the occupation administration of US counterterrorism expert Paul Bremer continues to fumble with the restoration of law and order and normal commercial life.

A major problem is the huge number of regular Iraqi soldiers and civil servants who have remained unpaid for the last two months. As a result, middle class families are having to rely upon the charity of friends and relatives to survive or are being forced to sell off household goods. The anguish of such people is clear. It was two unpaid soldiers in a protesting crowd outside the US administration headquarters who were gunned down when they started throwing rocks at a US vehicle. If this is the best answer that the US has for these desperate people, then matters are not going to improve. There will indeed by more ambush slayings of US occupation personnel, such as the shooting of two American soldiers guarding a Baghdad petrol station, which happened shortly after the killings at the US administration headquarters.

Washington talks of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, as if they have entirely forgotten the massive failure of just such a campaign in Vietnam. At least in South Vietnam, the Americans had a local government that was on their side. In Iraq there is no proper local authority, just a few Iraqi technocrats who, whatever they may say to the contrary, can do nothing without US approval.

Washington was warned again and again by its friends that it had to plan the peace every bit as meticulously as it planned the preceding war. It is now patently evident that the Americans did no such thing. They expected to be loved and have flowers pushed into the barrels of their guns, not rocks hurled at their heads. Through a profound lack of understanding of the complexities and subtleties of Iraq and its history, they have miscalculated and do not know what to do next.

The initiative may already have slipped irretrievably from their grasp. All they have left is their big guns, the growing enmity of the Iraqis and a rising casualty list. Ahead lie failure and humiliation for Washington and perhaps an even greater tragedy for the Iraqi people.