Editorial: Avert a bloodbath at Baghdad's gates
The Toronto Star
Mar. 24, 2003. 01:00 AM
torontostar.com
American tanks are now within a day's striking distance of Baghdad and Saddam Hussein's regime is doomed. But if the Americans expected to be hailed as liberators, they were mistaken.
Outnumbered, outgunned and outclassed, Iraqi troops and irregulars are fighting back with fatalism, grit and guile, using guerrilla hit-and-run tactics to draw the allies into nasty street battles. The fighting is sporadic but intense even in the Shi'ite south, where few support Saddam, though the allies are being greeted without resistance in some places.
While American and British forces will soon be at the gates of Baghdad, a city of 5 million, they would be wise to pause, and to appeal to the Arab League to broker the regime's surrender, rather than assault the city. If the loyal, well-equipped Republican Guard goes down fighting, the carnage could be appalling.
"Clearly, they are not a beaten force," Gen. Richard Myers, who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded after a rough day yesterday. "This is going to get a lot harder." Even U.S. President George Bush felt obliged to steel Americans. "This is just the beginning of a tough fight," he warned.
That is evident from the allies' failure to take Basra, or even tiny Umm Qasr after three days of fighting. Conquering Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit could be harder still. And that would be politically costly for Bush. Having "pre-emptively" attacked Iraq to topple Saddam, Bush has a moral duty to minimize civilian casualties.
Barring an abrupt regime collapse, this fight will get nastier as the allied forces move from sparsely settled areas, toward the capital.
Fragmentary as battlefield reports are, and filtered through a cheerleading U.S. media and scripted Pentagon briefings, the cost is fast adding up.
Yesterday, as Baghdad shuddered under new bombings, 500 Iraqis were hurt and 80 killed countrywide. The media published graphic photos of wounded children, and of Iraqi troops killed after hoisting white flags.
Meanwhile American troops were killed in firefights at Nassiriya, and in a Kuwait "fragging" incident. A British warplane was downed by a U.S. missile. And the first U.S. prisoners-of-war went on gruesome parade.
U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testily insists "the general progress ... is excellent." But that discounts the war's other costs.
Across the Arab world, crowds are cheering on Iraqi resistance.
And everywhere, American flags are being burned as anti-war protests swell. In New York 100,000 marched down Broadway. In Montreal, boorish hockey fans booed the U.S. anthem.
Asked whether Saddam might still surrender, assuming he is alive, Bush yesterday replied "he had his chance to go into exile" and blew it. Maybe so. But Bush must do what he can to broker a less bloody end to this war. |
