The war on four fronts; A year after the war on Iraq began, its

Sunday Herald, The, Mar 21, 2004 by Diplomatic editor Trevor Royle

Resolution in adversity, unity in the face of increased danger, steadfastness in an uncertain world, defiance against an unyielding enemy ... that is the message the Bush administration is sending out as it marks the first anniversary of military operations against Iraq.

First on parade was President Bush, rallying his allies with an address in the White House which spoke of steadfastness in adversity and the need to avoid compromise as though it were the work of the devil. His hawkish defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld followed with a homely, upbeat message to the troops, thanking them for their efforts and promising the end was almost in sight. Getting Iraq straightened out, he said, was like teaching a kid to ride a bike: "They're learning, and you're running down the street holding on to the back of the seat. You know that if you take your hand off they could fall, so you take a finger off and then two fingers, and pretty soon you're just barely touching it. You can't know when you're running down the street how many steps you're going to have to take. We can't know that, but we're off to a good start."

If only it were so simple. Both men showed determination in getting their message across to Washington's allies and the troops in Iraq, but the reality is much more complicated than the president's folksy, downhome moralising. One year after the coalition forces unleashed their modern weapons to bring down Saddam Hussein's regime there is no sense of closure or comfort, little belief that the war was well won or its objectives fulfilled.

True, Saddam has been deposed and Iraq has been put on the long road towards freedom from dictatorship, but these probably could have been achieved by other means. Dr Hans Blix, former head of the UN weapons inspection team, thinks so. On Friday he said the invasion of Iraq had polarised the Middle East and worsened the threat of global terrorism. He also had harsh words for the coalition, blaming Bush and Blair for pursuing a "witch-hunt" to justify their actions, exaggerating the Iraqi threat, and undermining his inspectors. They were, he said, like advertising executives hyping their product: war in Iraq is good.

So what now? Instead of scanning the horizon with the gaze of the justified conqueror, the US is embroiled in a series of interconnected conflicts, none of which it is winning in the short term and all of which will create headaches for Washington's strategic planners for at least 25 years. For the distinguished military commentator Anthony Cordesman, holder of the Arleigh A Burke chair in strategy at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the scenario is bleak and testing. He has given the clearest analysis of the challenges the US faces in a paper he presented to the institute called Four Wars And Counting. The four wars are Iraq, Afghanistan, Terrorism and the War Yet To Come.

He argues that these conflicts will require greater pragmatism and less reliance on ideological soundbites and slogans. "It's going to be a very tough year," he says. "In fact, it's going to be a very tough decade."

The War in Iraq Following the coalition's crushing victory, the war against Iraq is now being seen as possibly illegal and, in many minds, distinctly immoral. Why was its anniversary marked across the globe yesterday by the same kind of protests which preceded it? Why are the hawks on either side of the Atlantic so defensive, demanding that the world has to move on? For all the advance scaremongering, the fighting was certainly unequal. One statistic tells casual observers all they need to know about the military operations. In the financial year before the US and Britain sent their forces to the Gulf, the US spent $379 billion dollars on its armed forces, while Iraq rustled up a mere $2bn for the same purpose. The outcome of the conventional battle should never have been in doubt, and it comes as no surprise to find that in the most recent analyses of the conflict the shortest sections are on the performance and shortcomings of the Iraqi forces.

While most commentators agree that the best results of the war were the toppling of Saddam and the crushing of a rogue nation that threatened stability in the Middle East, there is also a widespread admission that WMD will never be found, either because they had been decommissioned by UN weapons inspection teams or because they had been spirited out of the country. It is also possible that their existence owed more to the braggadocio of Saddam loyalists who ran Iraq's armed forces and gave their leader over-optimistic accounts of their arsenal. Remember Comical Ali?

And the war itself has not yet been won. Coalition forces are bogged down in a nasty, low-intensity conflict which shows no sign of abating, though almost 600 soldiers have died since it officially ended. In public, US commanders toe the party line by emphasising improvements, such as the growing Iraqi security forces, and insisting that the transfer of power will take place according to timetable. In private, their thoughts are darker. Some fear coalition forces will be needed for at least 10 years to keep the peace, while others doubt that democracy and Iraq are natural bedfellows. For evidence they have only to look outside their defended compounds, where the different factions are weighing up their chances in the scramble that will follow the transfer of power. Winning the war in 2003 was the easy part; but securing the peace in 2004 is a different and much more volatile matter.