PUNISHMENT NEEDED

Phase Three?: The enemy is growing desperate. (Victor Davis Hanson, 8/21/03, National Review)

From the detritus of Wednesday's terror will arise a new grim acceptance that despite all our brilliantly rapid military victories we are not yet finished in this war for civilization, and that there are a group of killers -- whether Baathists, al Qaedists, West Bank murderers, or Iranian and Saudi terrorists-who shall give no quarter. We should never forget that. In the euphoria of the three-week victory many of us rightly still worried that under the new restrictive protocols of postmodern warfare the age-old laws of conflict were for a time being forgotten: The ease of postbellum occupation is in proportion to the level of punishment inflicted on the enemy.

This seems precisely right and suggests both that the failure to open the war with Shock and Awe, even if we thought we were getting Saddam with that decapitation shot, must be seen as a terrible mistake and that what is now needed is a series of brutal reprisals against the remnants of the Ba'athist regime, which means giving more control to the indigenous forces--Chalabi's and the Shi'a--so that they can do the dirty, but necessary, work.

MORE:
Inquiry of U.N. Bombing Focuses on Possible Ties to Iraqi Guards (DEXTER FILKINS, 8/22/03, NY Times)

American investigators looking into the suicide bombing of the United Nations compound on Tuesday are focusing on the possibility that the attackers were assisted by Iraqi security guards who worked there, a senior American official here said today.

The official said all of the guards at the compound were agents of the Iraqi secret services, to whom they reported on United Nations activities before the war. The United Nations continued to employ them after the war was over, the official said. [...]

"We believe the U.N.'s security was seriously compromised," the official said, adding that "we have serious concerns about the placement of the vehicle" and the timing of the attack. The bomb exploded directly under the third-floor office of the United Nations coordinator for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, while he was meeting with a prominent American human rights advocate, Arthur C. Helton. Both men were killed, along with several top aides to Mr. Vieira de Mello. [...]

The American official said investigators were trying to determine which, if any, of the guards failed to report to work the day of the attack. Even before the war, the government of Saddam Hussein was widely known to assign intelligence agents to guard and guide foreigners visiting or living in the country.

Suspicions have focused on the guards rather than other local United Nations personnel because their links to Mr. Hussein's security service were close. Under the former government, they had to report to the security service once a week on the activities of United Nations personnel, western officials said.

Even so, United Nations administrators retained the guards after Mr. Hussein's government was removed. American officials said earlier this week that the administrators had also turned down an American offer to provide greater security around the building.

In post-Vichy France, for example, such guards would have been summarily executed by the partisans. The problem in Iraq is that we are standing in the way of such reprisals. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 22, 2003 1:10 AM