PERMANENTLY ADRIFT IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC:

The dangers of bypassing cities (William Pfaff, April 7, 2003, International Herald Tribune)

While American troops have begun their attack on Baghdad, the coalition forces still have not taken any of Iraq's major cities.

They have thus far controlled desert and agricultural land, but the cities have been bypassed. There has been fear of the casualties urban fighting would inflict on all sides.

American military sources suggest that there is a plan for taking the modern city of Baghdad via its major thoroughfares, avoiding the dense and dangerous old city. But it is nonetheless a gamble to leave the other cities behind, as they remain a threat to the long line of communications from Kuwait. Doing so represents a bet that Baghdad will be taken quickly, and when that happens that the regime will collapse across the country.

Thus Basra and the other bypassed cities remain under Iraqi control. But of which Iraqis? State or municipal authorities? The military command? Party militants? [...]

This chaos is the predictable consequence of the allied attack. Create a battlefield and destroy existing structures of government, and this is what happens. The allies did not seriously prepare for this development because the absurd ideological preconceptions of American planners, and listening to the dreams and illusions of Iraqi exile politicians, had convinced them that the invading army would be welcomed by happy crowds, civic structures still intact. [...]

One of the many curious things President George W. Bush is quoted as saying, this time in Bob Woodward's book, "Bush at War," is that U.S. strategy in Afghanistan "is to create chaos, to create a vacuum." Out of the chaos and vacuum, good would come. This echoes the Trotskyist belief in the constructive effect of "permanent revolution."

It has another resonance as well, an apocalyptic religious one, of interest as the president is said by some to see his presidency within the context of the biblical narrative of the end of days. He certainly thinks of the United States as the vessel of mankind's salvation.

Woodward ends his book with another quotation from the president, uncomfortably apposite: "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the Earth in defense of our great nation."

Mr. Pfaff bids fair to retire the title as the very worst American pundit on the war, which he's now both opposed and predicted disaster for every step of the way only to have the war go smoothly, be greeted enthusiastically by the Iraqi people, and all without a smidge of help from the UN or the EU. It's painful, but worthwhile, reading through the href=http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articlesearch.tmpl&dt=articleAuthor&location=William%20Pfaff>archive of his essays which repeated make the argument, inane on its face, that Europe and the UN are serious long-term counterbalances to US power and that the current war on terror will in itself diminish American power. Even more so than Tom Friedman, Mr. Pfaff represents liberal Atlanticist orthodoxy distilled down to its essence, though the expiration date on that elixir is long past. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 7, 2003 11:40 AM