The Little Brown Reader

These forces appear to have three major targets. First, Iraqi infrastructure, which if kept dysfunctional saps the United States of both popular goodwill and resources. Second, U.S. military personnel, in small enough numbers to inflict casualties without sustaining any. Such assassinations hurt morale and are also intended to help turn American public opinion against the occupation. Third, the Iraqis who work with U.S. or coalition forces.

With this insurgent threat, there is little doubt that the U.S. faces serious obstacles to achieving a democratized and peaceful Iraq. The goal is not impossible, but it is surely not the euphoric cakewalk envisioned as Iraqi forces appeared to melt away while American columns approached. For it now seems certain that some of those forces never stopped fighting -- they merely shifted from a conventional to an unconventional stance.

The key, of course, is how many bad actors there are in the field. A few dozen die-hard Ba'athists loosely commanding a few hundred fighters and ad hoc jihads from neighboring countries could be enough to cause the kind of trouble Iraq now sees. Sooner or later such a force would spend itself, provided it does not receive new recruits.

But the U.S. does not have much time to work with. Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, is on record as saying he expects most of his troops to be home by September. In the best case scenario, where the U.S. finds a different unit to take the 3rd's place, those troops will need some weeks on the ground before they become effective in a role so hazardous and so impossible to prepare for.

Adding to the complications of operating in Iraq is a supposed ally that does not exactly see things the way America does. The detention of 11 Turkish soldiers by U.S. forces in Northern Iraq does not bode well for U.S. troops being able to leave the region anytime soon.