Mission unaccomplished

When U.S. President George W. Bush announced on May 1 that the war in Iraq was over following the fall of Baghdad and the ouster of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, little did Bush realize that the U.S. mission there was far from being accomplished.

Recent waves of deadly attacks against the U.S.-led coalition forces, particularly targeting American troops and officials, are proof positive that the war in Iraq is still going on despite the reduction in scale and its increasingly guerrilla-like nature. The number of casualties is increasing by the day, and the number of U.S. soldiers killed since the May announcement has now exceeded the number killed in action while the conventional war was still being waged.

Seven months after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration is still unable to find the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that it says were possessed or were being developed by Saddam's regime, and which were used as one of the justifications for the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

The world community, including many Americans, has protested the U.S. war in Iraq right from the beginning. Washington, however, turning a deaf ear to the protests and the United Nations Security Council's advice, unilaterally attacked Iraq, provoking the anger of many nations, particularly the Arab countries.

The war in Iraq, obviously, is far different from the war waged by the United States when it attacked Afghanistan to uproot Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist group following the attacks on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001. The U.S. attack on Afghanistan won international support and the UN also passed a resolution authorizing it as it was a war against a terrorist regime bred by religious fanaticism and not by dignified nationalism.

In Iraq, nationalism prevails. It is true that for the first few weeks of the U.S. occupation many Iraqis, who had lived under the oppression of Saddam's regime, demonstrated their euphoria, welcoming the "liberators" by toppling the statues of the dictator and other symbols of the former Iraqi military government. It is also true, however, that deep in their hearts, millions of Iraqi people, many of whom also disliked Saddam's iron-fisted rule, were unhappy to see their beloved and sovereign homeland occupied by foreign armed forces.

After living in a state of uncertainty and insecurity for months, many Iraqis now believe that those whom they once considered to be their liberators have turned out to be their "enemies" as evidenced by the spate of attacks against U.S. and other foreign targets over the past few weeks.

We unhesitatingly condemn these cowardly, terror attacks, especially when they are aimed at civilian targets, such as the hotel and the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad that were attacked last week. The Iraqi militants should also be aware that their deplorable acts will only taint their image and consign them to international isolation.

The bloody incidents and their causes need to be immediately contained, and the Bush administration, which started the war, has to put an end to the ongoing conflict in Iraq if it wishes to avoid American soldiers becoming trapped in another quagmire as happened in Vietnam decades ago. The upsurge in violence also strongly signals that the U.S. administration lacks a viable plan for restoring security in post-war Iraq.

Washington should also speed up the training of Iraqi police and troops and hand over security matters to the Iraqis themselves so that their national pride will no longer be hurt, and see to it that the U.S. mission in Iraq is truly accomplished. Let Iraq be Iraq.

The problems of Iraq, we believe, can be more quickly and comprehensively resolved by giving key roles to the UN and the Iraqi people themselves. The U.S., which has won the war against Saddam's regime, along with the UN and other international humanitarian agencies, also has the responsibility of restoring or even boosting Iraq's economic and political life, both of which have been damaged by the war.

At this point, the words uttered by the Duke of Wellington, a British soldier and statesman who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, are perhaps worth considering: "If there's anything more melancholy than a battle lost, it's a battle won."