Analysis
New Attacks Intensify Pressure on Bush
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 3, 2003; Page A01
Twice in the past two weeks, the Iraqi opposition has hit high-profile U.S. targets that had been largely beyond its reach, an escalation that may prove more significant strategically than tactically because of the increased political pressure it puts on the Bush administration.
Yesterday's hand-held missile attack on an Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter, which killed 16 soldiers and wounded 20, was the first lethal downing of a U.S. aircraft in Iraq since last spring's war. That attack followed by just a week a sophisticated rocket assault on the Baghdad hotel inside U.S. lines where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was staying. That came on top of lethal bombings of the U.N. headquarters in the capital and then that of the Red Cross.
"They are pretty good at surprise and finding the weak spots -- the U.N., then the Red Cross, now this," noted Richard H. Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In tactical terms, yesterday's action was troubling but unlikely to result in major changes in how the U.S. military operates on the ground and in the skies over Iraq. Helicopter pilots will be more wary of urban areas, and U.S. commanders probably will order up more counter-ambush operations, using aerial surveillance and ground patrols.
But the latest round of attacks in Iraq, and especially yesterday's deaths -- which amounted to the biggest single day of losses since last spring's conventional war -- may prove more significant in strategic terms.
"It is damaging not only because of the tragic human toll, but also because it looks like a dramatic escalation in lethality and therefore begs obvious questions: Are all helicopters at risk now? Are we losing the initiative? Who is winning?" said Peter D. Feaver, a former National Security Council staff member who teaches political science at Duke University.
"If the attacks get interpreted as evidence that the Baathist holdouts are winning, then attacks like this can be as lethal for public support as they are for the soldiers involved," he said.
<font color=red>Indeed, the helicopter downing came as two worrisome trends face the Bush administration. In Iraq, there are signs that the anti-U.S. opposition is escalating its attacks both in numbers and sophistication. Even while the U.S. intelligence haul in Iraq is improving, commanders there said, the fighters attacking them also are becoming more effective.
Meanwhile, the American public's support for President Bush's handling of the war is declining, which makes the situation even more volatile. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted last week, a slight majority -- 51 percent of those interviewed -- said they disapprove of his handling of it.
It was the first time that the number of those approving had dropped below 50 percent, and it was more than double the number of those who said they disapproved on May 1, when Bush declared an end to major combat operations. Since then, at least 240 U.S. troops have died in Iraq. <font color=black>
The problem for the Bush administration is that the American people have proven tolerant of casualties in military operations they understand and support, but not of those incurred in operations they do not understand or they oppose, according to several studies in recent years by political scientists.
"I think you can see the public is concerned by the continuing slow stream of casualties," said James Burk, a sociology professor at Texas A&M University and one of the academics who has studied public reaction to combat deaths. When there is division about the policy and uncertainty about its costs and duration, he said, relatively small numbers of casualties "can have an important impact."
It also is a lesson that some in Washington have drawn. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, after the October 1993 "Black Hawk Down" battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, in which 18 U.S. soldiers died, is said by an aide to have remarked that those losses would result in a change in U.S. policy because the American people did not understand why the battle had occurred.
But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld expressed confidence yesterday that the latest attacks would not undercut public support for the U.S. presence in Iraq.
"I think the American people have a good center of gravity," he said on ABC's "This Week." "I think they get it. They see that terrorism is a threat in this world. They would rather have us fighting terrorists outside of the United States of America than inside the United States of America. They know that what's taking place is tragic when you have a day like yesterday. But they also know it's necessary."
An additional problem is that the American public was not prepared for a long, difficult struggle in Iraq. Even the Pentagon's internal calculation before last spring's war was that the U.S. military presence in Iraq could be trimmed fairly swiftly after the fighting, and would be down to about 60,000 by now. There currently are more than twice that many U.S. troops in the country.
Some predicted that the latest fighting, combined with the beginning of the presidential primary season three months from now, will intensify the administration's desire to find a way to get out of Iraq.
<font color=red>"While resolutely denying that it is doing so, the Bush administration is looking for an exit," said Andrew J. Bacevich, a retired Army colonel who teaches international relations at Boston University. "With the political season approaching, this terrible loss will only increase the urgency felt within the White House to find a way out."
But retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, a consultant to the Pentagon on Iraqi security issues, said it is clear that the only "exit strategy" available is to develop Iraqi security forces to fight the remnants of Saddam Hussein's government. And he predicted that that approach will succeed. <font color=black>
"My cut on this is that time is not on the insurgents' side," Anderson said. "As internal Iraqi security forces come on line, they will be more adept at spotting foreigners and begin to root out Baathist holdouts better than our guys can, with their limited language capability and local cultural knowledge."
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