Hearts and Minds
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KUWAIT — With Americans and Iraqis killing each other just north of here and many of my friends at risk, I've been pained by some e-mail that has trickled over my laptop computer.
Some of it came from an old Egyptian friend, Ikram Youssef, a Harvard-educated scholar who has a natural empathy for the United States — and since he once lived in Kuwait, a rich understanding that Saddam Hussein is a monster. Yet Professor Youssef hopes that this war will end with an Iraqi victory over America.
"I certainly hope that this campaign will fail," he declared. And when even a thoughtful internationalist like Professor Youssef is siding with Saddam's army against America, I want to leap out of my hotel window.
The war that the rest of the world sees is different from the one Americans are viewing. The Pakistani newspaper Awami Awaz exults that "Iraqi leadership has humiliated the Americans." The Egyptian newspaper Al Wafd titles an editorial "The U.S. Empire of Evil." Muslim figures who sided with the U.S. after 9/11 and denounced Osama bin Laden are now urging "jihad" against Americans.
Within the U.S. as well, the war has been destructive, further pulverizing the civility of discourse. Each side assumes the other is not just imbecilic but also immoral, when in truth I believe that each side is genuinely high-minded: one is driven by horror of war and the other by horror of Saddam. Neither deserves the sneers of the other. I'm also dispirited today because in some e-mail from fellow doves I detect hints of satisfaction that the U.S. is running into trouble in Iraq — as if hawks should be taught a lesson about the real world with the blood of young Americans.
We doves simply have to let go of the dispute about getting into this war. It's now a historical question, and the relevant issue, for hawks and doves alike, is how we get out of this war (and how we avoid the next pre-emptive war). Americans should be able to find common ground, for all sides dream of an Iraq that is democratic and an America that is again admired around the world. Creating a postwar Iraq that is free and flourishing is also the one way to recoup the damage this war has already done to America's image and interests.
Unfortunately, the president's budget request this week showed little commitment to postwar Iraq. He asked for $62.6 billion for the war and just $2.45 billion for short-term relief and reconstruction, without addressing longer-term needs. Moreover, while the U.S. has been very careful until now to avoid civilian casualties, that emphasis is showing signs of slipping as the war gets tougher.
My intrepid Times colleagues Dexter Filkins and Michael Wilson are with U.S. marines who were in a firefight in which Iraqi fighters hid among women and children. After 10 Americans had been killed, the marines became less meticulous about avoiding civilian casualties.
"It's not pretty; it's not surgical," Chief Warrant Officer Pat Woellhof told them. "You try to limit collateral damage, but they want to fight. Now it's just smash-mouth football."
American military officers now say that the policy is to strike Iraqi military targets, if necessary, even when Saddam implants them among schools and apartment blocks, and that the responsibility for the resulting casualties lies with Saddam. Such strikes are understandably tempting now, but they will inflame Iraqi nationalism and make postwar Iraq incomparably more difficult to govern. One of the most depressing windows into this surging nationalism occurred on Wednesday when aid workers handed out food to throngs of hungry Iraqis in a coalition-controlled town called Safwan. Some Iraqis simultaneously jostled for food and chanted, "With our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Saddam."
The inspiration for our military strategy in Iraq comes from the late Sir Basil Liddell Hart, the great British military expert who urged the approach the U.S. later adopted in its island-hopping advance on Japan in World War II. Washington adopted a similar strategy to move on Baghdad.
But as we implement Sir Basil's strategy, let's also adhere to one of his cardinal points about the need to focus on what comes after the war. Since we're dropping fliers all over Iraq, we might also release leaflets over Washington inscribed with this saying by Sir Basil: "It is essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you desire."
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