Iraq deserves our full attention

The Inter Lake was never among those voices which thought the war in Iraq would be fought quickly and cleanly.

It was always obvious, based on other modern wars and on the Islamic underground movement elsewhere, that guerrilla warfare in the form of terrorism would be an immediate response to our invasion.

It was also obvious that the nation-state of Iraq was an artificial construct held together not by national loyalty but by the cult of personality of Saddam Hussein, and the military and police forces he used to terrorize his people.

There are three distinct populations in Iraq. The Kurds in the north have their own trans-border national ambitions; the Shiites to the southeast are largely a mirror of the Shiite-dominated regime in Iran; and the Baathists and Sunnis in between have long considered their own survival dependent on domination of the other two populations through force.

Thus, the toppling of Saddam's regime was inevitably going to lead to one of two results - either a Balkanization process whereby the superstate of Iraq would be partitioned into smaller independent states, or a democratic process whereby the competing minorities would forge a governing coalition.

The Bush administration has optimistically - perhaps too optimistically - pursued the alternative of a democratic Iraq where reason and self-interest would encourage all sides to work together for the greater good.

Alas, that policy is now frayed and may be reaching the breaking point. The Islamic terrorist movement has worked feverishly to make sure that President Bush's goal of a free and democratic Iraq is never accomplished. In the past few weeks, the fruit of their two-year campaign of terror has begun to pay dividends for them as members of various factions in the country have taken to random murder, bombings and wanton executions.

What we are witnessing, however, is not a civil war, but a tribal war. A civil war is a war between brothers over a matter of political disagreement such as what kind of government should be in place. In a civil war, there is always the hope of a civil resolution either through force or through negotiation. But in a tribal war, there is little hope for anything to end the violence because it is triggered not by a dispute about ideas but by a visceral hatred based just on who people are.

We have seen such wars in Africa and in Eastern Europe, and they usually end with thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of casualties. Men, women and children are killed indiscriminately in such a conflict as the goal is extermination, not victory.

We are dangerously close to such a point in Iraq, which we hope no one takes pleasure in. The idea that, to avoid genocide, the Iraqis should have had to continue living under the brutal repression of Saddam Hussein as the lesser of two evils should be abhorrent to anyone who cherishes freedom. Hussein was a danger to our security, and he was a danger to his own people. Those who wish we had left Iraq alone should acknowledge that by doing so, we would have been turning our backs on fellow human beings who were enslaved by a madman.

At least President Bush had a vision of a better world when he led us into battle.

But that does not relieve him of responsibility for failing to adequately plan for the outcome of the invasion. Sectarian violence should not have come as a surprise, nor should terrorism. The American people should have expected it, too, and been forewarned. But the president and his team have consistently underplayed the difficulty of the task at hand. That has just made their political work at home that much harder, and they should have known that it is impossible to fight a war abroad without the united support of the public at home.

Meanwhile, the war critics too deserve some of the blame for the morass which has enveloped Iraq. Their constant criticism of the president - and their inability to see the big picture of American interests in a stable, secure Middle East - helped to put the president on the defensive and probably led him to fight the war and the insurgents with considerably less than the full power that circumstances dictated.

So now we have reached a terribly dangerous impasse - with America afraid to use its power, and no one else strong enough to impose order on the warring factions. To withdraw would mean giving our sanction to the bloodbath that would follow, but to remain without the determination to prevail would mean turning our own soldiers and our allies into human sacrifices.

Since neither option is acceptable, we had better begin a national dialogue right now about how best to proceed, and what price we are willing to pay to ensure that Iraq (or what is left of it) does not turn into a terrorist state worse than what we started with. This does not mean we should cut and run; it means we need a clear statement of purpose and an achievable goal as we work with the Iraqis during their hoped-for transition to self-government.