LOS ANGELES, 2 April 2003 — When American cruise missiles and precision guided bombs first slammed into Baghdad less than two weeks ago, the American people were sure that the war would be as easy as any war could be.
In a carefully crafted media message, their leaders from President George W. Bush on down had promised that the Iraqi regime would crumble like a “house of cards”, and Iraqi fighters would quickly lay down their weapons when confronted with the overwhelmingly superior force of their American “liberators”.
But now as those initial rosy projections melt away, there are clear signs that support for the war is beginning to crumble in the American heartland. A poll published Monday by NBC and the Wall Street Journal showed a growing unease with the war against Iraq. Nine percent of those surveyed said the war was proceeding better than expected, a drop from a poll conducted March 23, in which 25 percent expressed optimism with the war’s prosecution. A separate poll conducted by Gallup found that only 35 percent of Americans say the Bush administration gave an accurate assessment of how difficult the war would be.
With the tough battle of Baghdad and its increased American and Iraqi civilian casualties yet to start, and with the burgeoning peace movement planning another weekend of nationwide protests, most observers expect these feelings of ambivalence to intensify. Already the mood of the US media has turned sharply away from the gung-ho support it displayed in the early days of the war. Recent stories have focused on a reported feud between army top brass and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He insisted on starting the war with less than half the troops that were used for the apparently easier task of ousting Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991.
Other stories have delved into the reasons the US leadership failed so drastically in assessing the initial stages of the war, while a Washington Post article on Monday said there were deep splits in the top ranks of the government about the “bum advice” that President Bush received from the neoconservatives that formulated his Iraq policy.
All this criticism is beginning to remind people of a previous debacle of American military adventurism: the disastrous Vietnam War. Prior to the start of the current war, only committed peace protesters were willing to draw the comparison. Now the question is posed throughout the US media.
“The war in Iraq turns ugly — that’s what wars do,” wrote James Webb, a Vietnam veteran and former Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan. “Welcome to hell. Many of us lived it in another era. And don’t expect it to get any better for a while.”
An article in the media trade paper Editor and Publisher compared the two wars in an article entitled “From Quick War to Quagmire”, while foreign policy expert Al Santoli wrote an article in the conservative Washington Times entitled “Baghdad and the Ghost of Tet”, referring to one of the most infamous campaigns of the Vietnam War.
Even the conservative Wall Street Journal criticized the decision to prosecute the war without the army division that was meant to have deployed through Turkey. Newsweek wondered whether the Iraq war could mushroom into a full-blown Mideast war, given the inflamed passions of the Arab street and Rumsfeld’s recent warnings against Syria and Iran.
But perhaps the most withering assessment came from longtime Bush critic Maureen Dowd, who scoffed at the administration’s surprise at the Iraqi use of guerilla tactics. “We’re shocked that the enemy forces don’t observe the rules of war. We’re shocked that it’s hard to tell civilians from combatants, and friends from foes,” she wrote. “Why is all this a surprise again? I know our hawks avoided serving in Vietnam, but didn’t they, like, read about it?”
