WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- The security situation in Iraq has reached its nadir, becoming the most worrisome since U.S. forces first entered Baghdad in April 2003.
There seems to be no end to the nightmarish hell into which Iraq is free-falling, the cadence of violence increasing progressively with every week. Thirty car bombs exploded in just this past month, killing dozens of innocent people, many of them new recruits of the Iraqi National Guard or police.
Attacks against U.S. forces have reached an all-time high of about 80 a day. More than 1,000 U.S. troops have lost their lives and about 100 people have been kidnapped, many of them Westerners helping rebuild the country. While most of those abducted have been released, about 20 have been killed, often in the most gruesome manner. And largely unreported are the Iraqi civilian casualties who, as of Sept. 22, number 14,843, according to Iraqbodycount.org, a London-based non-governmental organization.
Amid growing revulsion, helpless hostages are being brutally slaughtered on camera for the world to witness the cold-blooded cruelty and unlimited capacity of gratuitous savagery of the kidnappers, trying to justify their ignoble acts in the name of a god -- or Allah -- that would never condone such barbarism.
Meanwhile, both candidates running for November's presidential election are promising "solutions" to the Iraq quagmire. In truth, there is little either candidate -- George W. Bush or John Kerry -- can do in the immediate future to solve the crisis in Iraq.
Short of committing at least another 150,000 to 200,000 combat troops to clamp down on the insurgency with a titanium fist, the security situation in Iraq will continue to deteriorate. January's much-anticipated elections -- if they still occur -- are unlikely to really address the insurgency and violence, which President Bush admits will only grow as the election date nears.
Kerry says that internationalizing the crisis is a first step towards a viable solution. The Democratic hopeful advocates turning to the world community for help. Kerry says that as president he would have a clean slate to deal with America's allies, who President Bush has alienated by shunning the United Nations and most of Europe in the lead-up to the war.
"Bush does not have the credibility to lead the world," said Kerry. "Bush has handled the war there incompetently," added Kerry.
A number of analysts will agree that Bush and his advisers largely ignored recommendations from the State Department on how to govern post-war Iraq. They chose instead to head the counsel of the Defense Department -- who had masterfully planned the invasion -- but came a day late and a dollar short of properly administering the post-combat phase of the war. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Indeed, it should have been smooth sailing once major combat operations were over -- the Baathists in custody or on the run, the Iraqi military disbanded and Saddam Hussein underground and eventually under arrest. But after the initial euphoria of "liberation" passed, it did not take very long for conditions to start deteriorating and for security to spin out of control.
The first breakdown occurred when looters rampaged, emptying government offices then turned their attention to removing rare and irreplaceable artifacts from the museums.
Allowing the initial chaos to run its course was one of the biggest mistakes in the post-invasion planning. The reason given by the U.S. military was that there were not enough troops to allow the invasion force to transform itself into a police force. That still remains much of today's problem, a dilemma that both Bush or Kerry will have a difficult time addressing and redressing.
The first few days after the fall of Baghdad were a crucial time during which America's resolve was tested by the insurgents -- remnants of the Baath regime and foreign jihadis, some of whom had started making their way into Iraq. Had the U.S. troops imposed the rule of law, punishing, arresting, or even shooting looters and others violators, it would have shown the Iraqis that the U.S. was serious about maintaining security. Had this been the case, the situation in Iraq today would have been drastically different.
As it were, the days following the invasion set the ground rules for the bedlam that ensued. Now, Iraq is more dangerous than it has ever been. The few Western journalists and businessmen brave enough to remain in the country hardly dare venture outside their defended hotels and heavily guarded compounds.
A little less than 18 months since the U.S. invasion, a once secular Iraq has turned into a magnet for fundamental Islamist terrorists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man believed responsible for much of the terrorist activity in the country. Iraq has turned into a haven for fundamentalists the way Afghanistan was prior to the U.S. invasion. The presence of thousands of insurgents getting hands-on training and expertise on weapons and explosives represents a real and present danger, not only to Iraq, but to the rest of the region as well as for Europe, only a couple of borders away. And eventually there is a real danger for the United States, too, against whom much of the fundamentalist anger is ultimately directed.
"If Iraq were to descend into chaos, it could spread to other areas," warned Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy," speaking at a conference on security in Kuwait last May.
Indeed, it would appear that chaos has already descended on Iraq. The war has turned into the military's worst fear -- urban guerrilla warfare, or in the words of Britain's chief of defense staff Gen. Sir Michal Jackson, "a counter-insurgency war."
Bush vision of bringing democracy to Iraq and making it a shining example in the Middle East is fading fast. Critics of the war, such as Robert O. Boorstin, senior vice president for national security at the Center for American Progress, said, that "democracy (in Iraq) has taken a step backwards."
Supporters of the president and of the war will counter-argue that Iraq enjoys greater freedom today than it did under Saddam -- which is true. But the country is also in a far more precarious situation where terrorists are also enjoying a free hand in a way they never did before.
What is distressing about Iraq's security issue is that neither candidate really seems to offer a viable solution. Kerry's intention to internationalize the crisis may not hold the answer. Few countries, if any, would be willing at this juncture to involve their soldiers in the mess that Iraq has become. And despite President Bush saying he is "optimistic we'll succeed," if he hasn't been able to fix the problem during his first term, why should a second term prove any different?
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