WASHINGTON, 25 March 2003 — “It is evident that it’s going to take a while to achieve our objective,’’ President Bush said soberly on the White House lawn on Sunday. “It’s important for the American people to realize that this war has just begun. It may seem like a long time because of all the action on TV, but in terms of the overall strategy, we’re just in the beginning phases.’’
When the war against Iraq began last week, some Bush administration officials privately said it might last only two or three weeks. Early Thursday morning, they took a chance on winning the war in a single night, by striking at a Baghdad compound where Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons were believed to be staying.
But now — after Iraqi forces have mounted stiff resistance in several cities — the war is beginning to look longer and more costly than some Americans expected.
And a longer war has both military and political consequences, none of them good. The military consequences are apparent: more combat, more mishaps, more dead and wounded on both sides, more casualties among civilians. But the political and diplomatic effects are equally worrisome: more doubts at home and more opposition abroad.
A long, televised siege of Baghdad with mounting civilian deaths could touch off unrest in the Muslim world and spark renewed terrorism against Americans, unwelcome consequences that a quick, “clean’’ war might have avoided.
“The bar that defines victory in a war like this is very high,’’ said Andrew J. Bacevich, a former US Army officer who teaches at Boston University. “I don’t think he has six months. I don’t think he has three months. If it’s not coming to a conclusion by three weeks into the war, the skeptics’ argument becomes more credible — and the president has a problem.’’
Bush, who deliberately stopped to talk with reporters on Sunday as he returned to the White House from a weekend at Camp David, repeated two points several times for emphasis: the war is on schedule, but it is unlikely to end quickly or easily.
“I can assure the American people we’re making good progress, and I also can assure them that this is just the beginning of a tough fight,’’ he said.
In public, the president and his aides had never predicted the war would be short or effortless. But neither did they stress the likelihood of tough combat. Instead, during the five-month diplomatic battle to win international support for military action, they emphasized that the outcome would not be in doubt.
Some military officers warned privately before the war that public expectations were set too high, but their caution collided with the optimism of advocates of the new-style psychological warfare — sometimes dubbed “shock and awe’’ — that was supposed to buckle Saddam’s regime.
Bush worked a mild caveat into his televised statement on the first night of the war: “A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict,’’ he said.
But public expectations were already high. The war’s opening gun pushed the stock markets up and oil prices down. A Gallup Poll of Americans produced for CNN and USA Today found that two-thirds of respondents said they expected the war to last less than three months; one-third said they expected it to be over within a month; and most thought that fewer than 100 Americans would be killed or injured. Those were significantly higher levels of optimism than the same pollsters found before the 1991 Gulf War.
