LONDON, 28 March 2003 — At least 14 dead and 30 injured: this was the toll from two missiles that struck a market in a residential area of northern Baghdad on Wednesday, two American missiles gone astray. Invaluable propaganda for Saddam Hussein and his regime, the graphic scenes of death and despair will also have brought home the brutal reality of war to every television viewer — and newspaper reader — around the world.

In the impassioned debates that preceded the first strikes on Iraq, we were assured by our politicians that two guiding principles would be observed. First, they promised that great efforts would be made to minimize civilian casualties. This was to be an operation directed against the regime of Saddam Hussein, not against the people of Iraq; it was intended to liberate and not to conquer. Second, they expressed confidence that the war, once embarked upon, would soon be won.

These undertakings doubtless helped to limit the anti-war rebellion in British Parliament. They may also have softened at least some of the public hostility to the conflict once it had begun. In fact, though, each contained a contradiction. If Iraq really constituted as deadly a threat to world security as the prime minister and others had warned, why were they so confident that a war could be swiftly won? And if the campaign proved to be harder and longer than had been hoped, if victory could only be won at the price of many casualties, could the imperative of sparing civilians really be honored? Now, with the war a week old and casualties — including civilians — mounting, these questions need to be posed, even if they cannot fully be answered.

It is already clear that the impression given by our politicians that the regime of Saddam could be removed swiftly and almost without bloodshed was at best wishful thinking and at worst a deliberate effort to delude. The prospects of such an outcome have narrowed by the day. If only Saddam had definitely been killed in the first “targeted strike”, if the port of Umm Qasr had been handed to the US and British without a fight, if the people of Basra had spontaneously welcomed the forces as liberators, if they had risen against their Baath Party rulers...If only just one of those plans had been realized — but it was not. US, British and Australian forces are now having to fight their way against Iraqi resistance — both concentrated and sporadic — all the way to Baghdad. The battles at the strategic crossing points of the Euphrates at Nassiriya and at Najaf have each left dozens of Iraqi dead and hundreds of wounded. Conservative figures for those killed in air raids on Baghdad stand at around 100. The number of dead and wounded among the Allied forces is infinitely smaller at fewer than 50 so far, but the numbers mount daily.

The initial response to the lengthening casualty lists is likely stiffen resolve on both sides. The Iraqi response to Wednesday’s market explosion was outrage, not defection.

Here in Britain, the point at which the number of casualties, either civilians or combatants, becomes politically unacceptable will be far lower. This was, and remains, an unpopular war, and the more casualties there are on either side, the more the outright opponents of the war will feel vindicated. As a nation, however, we have traditionally had a relatively high tolerance of military casualties. There has long been an acceptance, born of the experience of two world wars, that military conflicts are brutal and servicemen are wounded and killed. By those standards, the casualties so far in Iraq have been low — and we hope that they remain so.

A rapidly escalating number of Iraqi casualties could also become a political risk, calling into question the good faith of those who promised a short war with minimal casualties. Even if civilian casualties are few relative to the number of Iraqi troops killed, a point will come when the slaughter is compared to the one-sided “turkey-shoot” that effectively ended the Gulf War 12 years ago.