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To: TobagoJack who wrote (55797)	11/10/2004 3:57:02 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Playing into Saddam's hands By Shlomo Avineri Published: November 9 2004 20:25 \| Last updated: November 9 2004 20:25 As the battle rages in Falluja there is one certainty: this is not the war the US-led coalition had in mind when the decision was taken to topple Saddam Hussein. Nor is the insurgency merely an "insurrection" against foreign occupation. Rather, it is the kind of guerrilla war apparently planned from the moment the US threatened to invade. Yet none of the various investigations in the US and elsewhere into the conduct of the war in Iraq has touched the core issue of the nature of the war itself. In the months leading up to the US-led invasion, coalition military planners and political analysts imagined that Mr Hussein was either sitting in one of his palaces doing nothing or that he was preparing to fight a full-frontal, conventional war battle that everyone knew he would lose in the face of superior western firepower. The only questions were how long it would take and how many casualties there would be. So when the Iraqi army apparently disintegrated and the famed Republican Guard and other elite formations failed to engage the invading forces, it was widely seen as proof of Mr Hussein's resounding defeat. Not so. It now seems clear - as suggested in some accounts by Iraqi military personnel that have been made public - that Mr Hussein was not playing by the rules of contemporary western linear warfare. He knew that in such a contest he stood no chance. Instead, he was preparing to wage the kind of asymmetrical war in which the weak and under-resourced would have the upper hand. For what is now happening in Iraq is probably the war that Mr Hussein planned from the very beginning. The various military, paramilitary and security units did not "disintegrate"; they went underground, disappearing in the Maoist guerrilla tradition of fish in water; weapons were distributed and stashed throughout the country; the widespread looting, disruption of electricity and water supplies and vandalising of public buildings were not carried out by "criminal" elements but by members of the regime's numerous security organisations. Suicide bombers - who made their appearance in Falluja in the first stages of the US invasion, but were then treated as a side issue - were clearly well-trained; tough, long-term indoctrination is needed to convince young people to forgo their hopes in life. None of these plans and preparations were spontaneous responses to the US occupation. They were part of a deliberate strategy to defeat the Americans, and it appears to be working. All this clearly takes place at a terrible price to the people of Iraq. But such has been the history of Saddam Hussein's regime. His rule was only the most brutal of the Sunni-dominated regimes that controlled Iraq. With the exception of the Shia militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr (which does not enjoy broad support among Iraqi Shia), most of the current violence in Iraq is being carried out by Sunni, whether Iraqi or foreign. They are fighting a rearguard battle to maintain the domination that they appeared to have lost with the US-led invasion. This bloody war is being waged not only against the foreign occupiers and anyone who co-operates with them. It is equally aimed at Shia holy shrines in Kerbala and Kurdish targets in mixed cities such as Mosul. These Iraqi Sunni - and their foreign supporters who flock to Iraq, who are all Sunni - are not "dead-enders", to use the colourful language of Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary. Neither is Mr Hussein. True, he is in US custody, but it is not the US that will try him. To imagine that the current Iraqi regime will be able to stage a legitimate war crimes trial is preposterous: with no judiciary, no reliable police force and no effective control of most of the country, it lacks both legitimacy and efficacy. Is it impossible for Mr Hussein to stage some kind of comeback? At the moment this appears highly unlikely, but stranger things have happened. The US has already readjusted its policies in Iraq more than three times in the last 18 months. The plan to hold Iraqi elections in January, even if they proceed, in whatever form, will not change much. The only way to finish off Mr Hussein's regime would have been to smash the Iraqi state the way the Allies did Germany in 1945. But for obvious reasons this could not, and should not, have been done. These harsh facts - not daydreaming about better strategies for how to "win the war of democracy in Iraq" - are the reality faced by George W. Bush. Schadenfreude at US hubris, incompetence and failure should not be permitted to inform international attitudes to the situation in Iraq. What the world needs to do is seriously to face the unpalatable truth that the war has not yet been won and that new thinking is needed, not least to ensure that even a military victory alone does not turn into a Pyrrhic one, like Russia's hollow triumph in Grozny. The writer is professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

To: TobagoJack who wrote (55797)	11/10/2004 4:10:53 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Who is winning most with crisis and chaos? Bird Flu?: More export of chickens SARS? More tourists inflow Mad Cow Desease?: More beef exports Ivory Coast trouble? More Cocoa export <<If Ivory Coast - West Africa's economic powerhouse and the world's top cocoa producer - returns to war, everyone from its neighbours to the world's chocolate lovers will feel the pain. Many hold one man responsible: President Laurent Gbagbo. His fate after the week's violence stands to determine his country's fate as well.>> Hurricanes hit Florida? Higher prices of frozen organe juice Airlines crisis? More exports of commuter jets by Embraer World hungry for commodities? More FDI in infrastructure. Oil prices up? More interest in Ethanol! Brazil wins because is an island of peace on a sea of trouble!!! Sorry no time to correct spell!!!