Ralph Peter's take:
By RALPH PETERS
April 1, 2004 -- YESTERDAY, Sunni Arab gangsters and terrorists ambushed four American reconstruction workers in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The bodies were dragged through the streets, burned and dismembered. In the finest traditions of the Middle Ages, two of the corpses were hanged from a bridge. Crowds cheered.
Such atrocities are inevitable. On several counts.
First, the diehard Ba'athists from the old regime and their Islamic-terrorist allies see that they're losing. Despite tactical setbacks, Iraq continues to make strategic progress. The hardliners have lost all the power they enjoyed under Saddam. Their voices count no more than those of other Iraqis. They might even have to work for a living.
The atrocities in Fallujah's streets were acts of rage, not strength.
Second, a forlorn hope remains among the terrorists that, if only they can kill enough Americans and do so as graphically as possible, Washington will lose heart and abandon the struggle. The assassins live in yesterday, both that of an over-hyped golden age of Islam and in the more recent era of President Clinton's passivity in the face of barbarism.
The terrorists are wrong. We're not quitting. But the tragic cowardice of the Spanish electorate last month encouraged civilization's enemies to believe that the West is inherently weak. They do not understand that America isn't Europe - or that even Europeans will strike back, if pressed hard enough.
Third, and most tragically, our troops, contractors and the people of Iraq are still paying a price for the delusions of a cabal of Pentagon civilians who insisted that occupation could be done on the cheap. Yesterday's crimes in Fallujah have their roots in the early days of the Coalition victory, when our forces simply did not have enough boots on the ground to establish a convincing presence throughout the Sunni Triangle.
As this column has stressed over the past 12 months, there is no substitute for adequate numbers of troops. You can't change the world on the cheap - or even pacify a cluster of embittered cities. Saddam's supporters needed to meet U.S. troops everywhere but in their latrines (with an occasional flashlight check there, too).
Instead, we drove by. When the dust settled, the streets belonged to our enemies again.
Fourth, our strong American values worked against us. From presidents down to Army privates, we instinctively want to help others. But military occupations of hostile, strife-torn territories require a combination of mailed fist and velvet glove, with the proportions adjusted, literally, from day to day. From the beginning of our occupation, we failed to establish discipline throughout the country. We needed to apply the mailed fist firmly in the Sunni Triangle. Instead, we over-emphasized the velvet glove.
We didn't even have the common sense to declare martial law. It convinced our enemies that we were naive and weak.
When dealing with opponents whose power you have taken away, you start with an emphasis on the mailed fist, granting velvet-glove privileges as they're earned. Instead, we kidded ourselves that building playgrounds would persuade murderers to love us.
Fifth (and related), when the cities of the Sunni Triangle, such as Fallujah, Ramadi or Tikrit, engaged in acts of terror, we needed to make an example of one of them to demonstrate our power and resolve to the others.
The world would have complained. The world always complains. But success is forgiven, however grudgingly, while failure only encourages our enemies, in the Middle East or elsewhere.
If it lacks the fortitude to do what is necessary, even a superpower might as well stay home. This is a war against the most implacable enemies - Islamic terrorists - that our nation has ever faced. Good manners are no substitute for victory.
Three waves of terror attacks were predictable. Our enemies study us for potential weaknesses and were bound to test us during our vast troop rotation. What we're seeing now - in Fallujah and in the re-energized roadside bombing campaign - is the first wave of attacks.
Next, we'll see a much greater wave of strikes - frantic and fanatical - as the June 30 transfer of power approaches. The enemies of Iraqi freedom, home-grown or foreign interlopers, must disrupt the return of Iraqi sovereignty. They've told their sympathizers that the United States wants to rule their country indefinitely and steal its oil. They can't afford the development of a rule-of-law democracy, however imperfect, in Iraq. Indeed, free Iraqi self-rule is their greatest enemy.
The third wave of attacks will come in the build-up to the U.S. presidential election. Our soldiers, contractors and Iraqi officials will be attacked throughout Iraq, and the terrorists will strain their resources to attack the United States itself. They hope to repeat their electoral success in Spain and imagine, wrongly, that a Democratic victory would mean that Washington would retreat from Iraq and the War on Terror.
But whoever our next president may be, America won't - and can't - quit. Politicians from both parties have a responsibility to make that unmistakably clear over the coming months.
We're learning. Future occupations elsewhere - and we shall see them, like it or not - will benefit from lessons learned in Iraq. Meanwhile, it's essential that Americans do not succumb to the media hype implying that the atrocities in Fallujah were a defeat. On the contrary, they underscored the frustration and exasperation of enemies who can only bring off small-scale bombings and assassinations.
Confident enemies do not drag bodies through the streets and mutilate corpses. The grim display in Fallujah was a symbol of weakness, not a sign of strength.
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