Is Iraq President Bush's 'Vietnam'?

President Bush, on the other hand, thought that the analogy with Vietnam was false. He said during the press conference on 13th April, " That analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to our enemy."

Why Senator Kennedy compared Iraq with Vietnam?

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Many analysts believe that there are plenty of similarities in both situations. The US has the same status of invader-occupier in Iraq and in Vietnam. American troops can't speak the language. They know little about their culture. They shoot anyone with the result that the majority of population oppose them. After the deaths of four Americans, marines have killed about 880 Iraqis in Fallujah, half of them are reportedly civilians including women and children. They continue to flex their fire power, bullying the locals as were the American troops in Vietnam.

Furthermore, American military do not know who the enemy is in Iraq. In Vietnam the same thing occurred. They shot anyone in the universal peasant clothing of black pyzamas. Furthermore troops build-up in Iraq is reminiscent of what occurred in Vietnam. Although the US is a great superpower, in Iraq it has found the limits of its power as it found in Vietnam in the past. The Bush administration has no exit strategy in Iraq as was in Vietnam.

Strategy in trouble
President Bush and his close aides overestimated the strength of military power to bring back stability in Iraq. Before the war Harvard's Michael Ignatieff said that the question " is not whether America is too powerful but whether it is powerful enough". It seems that Ignatieff is right and the US is not powerful enough either to win "the hearts and minds" of Iraqi people or stabilise Iraq. The Bush administration forgets what Shakespeare in Measure for Measure wrote: " O! it's excellent, to have a giant's strength; but tyrannous to use it like a giant".

The neo-conservatives of the Bush administration imagined that in the past the US occupied Germany and Japan after winning the Second World War and with the aid of the Marshall Plan they brought democracy and great prosperity in both of these countries. They thought Iraq would be the same and could be re-fashioned according to its own plan after the war. They were seriously mistaken to compare Iraq with either Germany or Japan.

The pre-war argument that removal of Saddam Hussein regime would create a pro-western democracy in Iraq does not seem to hold good. If election were held in Iraq, the majority of Shi'ites would be elected in a parliament and a Shi'ite clerical government would be installed. The government policies will likely to be controlled by Ayatollah Sistani. Democratic governments according to the US must be what they want them to be and not what the majority of the population will decide. This view some say is another version of "controlled democracy". One may argue if Israel is a Jewish State, why the majority of Shi'ites cannot install their elected government led by a turban-clad Muslim cleric ?

Many observers believe that the appointment of the Iraqi Governing Council by the US on the basis of strictly sectarian and ethnic divisions is disingenuous because such divisions have not been central to the country's political culture and it ushered an unhappy start to a new era of democracy in the country. Although Sunnis have ruled the majority Shi'ites (60% of the Iraqi population) there is no permanent enmity when they face external threat.

After one year Americans are able to see the bonding between the Sunnis and Shi'ites. One Shi'ite Iraqi reportedly told a reporter that : " The US tries to make us enemies. But the Sunni and the Shi'ites can speak together --there will not be a war between us". In Sunni-dominated town of Fallujah, the Shi'ites were reportedly lining up to donate food and other essential supplies for a 1000-vehicle humanitarian convoy from Baghdad to Fallujah.

Another unexpected fact occurred during the Fallujah resistance movement. The Iraqi security forces refused to go and fight in Fallujah with the Americans and they argued that they had not signed up to fight with Iraqis. This implies that the American military cannot rely upon the Iraqi security forces that they have trained during the last one year. That is one of the reasons that forced the head of the central command General John Abizaid to ask the Pentagon for 10, 000 more troops (in addition to its 135,000 soldiers in Iraq) to cope with the Sunni and Shi'ite resistance to coalition forces.

US policy makers have taken aback by the breadth and speed of Iraqi resistance movement. It seems that they seem to be out of touch with the anti-occupation sentiments of vast majority of Iraqis. The absence of Iraqi people's support and the critical comments of many members of the US- appointed Iraqi Governing Council on operations in Fallujah is a stark reminder that the adventure of the US-led war in Iraq has run into trouble.

It is reported that British officials in Iraq do not agree with the strategy pursued by the US. Former British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the number two of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq who has now left the position after a six- month stint had disagreed with decisions of the US administrator Ambassador Paul Bremer. It has been reported that " Greenstock thought Bremer was naïve; Bremer thought Greenstock was pursuing wrong policies."

The US does not yet know to whom sovereignty would be transferred by 30th June. The US sought help from the UN and the UN special envoy former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi ( a Sunni) has been making his earnest efforts to make a deal with Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani on transfer of power to an interim body of technocrats as care-taker government headed by a Prime Minister before election is held in January next year. Many believe that Iran's support remains vital for a good solution to this difficult issue. It is reported in Tehran that the US finally had to eat humble pie and requested Iran ( a member of Bush's axis of evil) to help ease the situation in Iraq.

Other events
The President was forced to call a rare prime-time media conference on 13 April in an attempt to limit the damage to his re-election chances. This is Mr. Bush's 12th press conference since taking office in January 2001. This demonstrates how desperate he has been to vindicate his policies in Iraq and war on terrorism. Last week a new poll in Newsweek magazine showed President Bush had fallen behind Democrat party challenger Senator John Kerry ( Kerry is leading 7 points ahead).

During the press conference, the President grimaced, sighed, rambled and chuckled under his breath in replying unexpected questions, often uncomfortably in "stock phrases" and familiar "mantras". He was defensive saying that no one could predict all the hazards that would lie ahead and reiterated his resolve to staying in the course in Iraq. He added that a small percentage of the Iraqi militants should not decide the fate of the people. He said that " I have directed our military commanders to make every preparation to use decisive force if necessary to maintain order and to protect our troops".

Many observers doubt whether the President has at all realised that his existing unsuccessful strategy of using massive force against Iraqi people need drastically to be reassessed. The New York Times in its editorial stated : " Unhappily he (Bush) failed to address either of the questions uppermost in Americans' minds: how to move Iraq from its current chaos, and what he has learned from 9/11 implications...

his responses to questions were distressingly rambling and unfocused."

Meanwhile the events surrounding the September 11 attacks are under intense scrutiny in public hearings before an Independent September 11 Commission. The daily Presidential briefing of 6th August of 2001, declassified on 10 April by the White House under pressure, had a key paragraph. It stated " FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country (US) consistent with preparation for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York". Many of the families of victims of the attacks and the Commission demanded an explanation from the Bush administration what actions they took, given the clear warning by FBI, to prevent the attacks.

Many political leaders and observers believe that Iraqi invasion undermined the war on terrorism. It has strengthened the radical Islamic militant movement across the world and Iraq has been a magnet for their operations. To quote again Senator Kennedy:

" By going to war in Iraq on false pretences and neglecting the real war on terrorism, President Bush gave Al-Qaeda two years -- two whole years -- to regroup and recover in the border regions of Afghanistan. As the terrorist bombings in Madrid and other reports now indicate, Al-Qaeda has used that time to plant terrorist cells in countries throughout the world and establish ties with terrorist groups in many different lands."

Conclusion
As Iraq's situation gets worse, an Israeli newspaper Haaretz suggested that Saddam Hussein might be the answer to America's problem and added that : " We wanted to create a new order in Lebanon; they wanted to create a new order in Iraq... We pulled out without achieving a thing... If I were him ( Bush), I'd send Saddam Hussein back to Iraq -- he would know how to sort this mess out in no time." Another Israeli-Arab newspaper Kul- Al-Arab wrote: " The Iraqis have discovered that the freedom the Americans introduced means humiliation, enslavement and the usurpation of Arab resources so that America can grow richer".

There is a saying that the very first law of holes is not to stop digging but to recognise that you are in a hole. Political observers believe the sooner the Bush administration realises the depth of its quagmire in Iraq, the better will be its strategy. As the former hostage in Lebanon Terry Waite has recently said that democracy is not a "postage stamp" that you externally attach on an envelope. It must grow from within and the pixilation of religious and ethnicities in Iraq is not a congenial environment for democracy and therefore it is reasonable to assume that democracy in Iraq is a long way off.

Barrister Harun ur Rashid is a formerBangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.