Fighting flares in Iraq as the U.S. passes a milestone

What happened

Violence erupted across Iraq this week, sparked by the launch of an Iraqi government offensive against Shiite factions in Basra, Iraq’s main oil-transport center. At least 64 Iraqis died in fighting that spread to Baghdad, with the heavily protected Green Zone—where U.S. officials are housed—taking intense rocket and mortar fire. The escalation of violence coincided with the report of the 4,000th U.S. combat death in Iraq and the release of a Pentagon study recommending that the U.S. stop withdrawing troops in July and maintain a force of 140,000 through 2008—the same as before last year’s “surge.” With President Bush backing that recommendation, it appeared that any decision to withdraw more troops would be left to Bush’s successor.

The president marked the war’s fifth anniversary by declaring that “a major strategic victory in the war on terror” was in sight. “I have vowed in the past, and I will vow so long as I’m president, to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain,” Bush said.

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What the editorials said

The report that 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq is “a measure of the extraordinary human sacrifice” of those fighting there, said USA Today. But it’s also a reminder that the troops in Iraq have borne “an extraordinarily unfair share” of the war’s burdens. “Only by asking very little” of most Americans “has the administration been able to sustain a war” that should never have been fought.

We were reminded last week just why Americans are sacrificing their lives in Iraq, said The Wall Street Journal. In a report that the mainstream media both distorted and underpublicized, the Pentagon last week documented “Iraq’s links to worldwide terror networks, including al Qaida.” The report found no formal, direct alliance between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida. But on the basis of 600,000 captured documents, the report makes plain that Saddam enthusiastically supported jihadists throughout the Middle East, trained terrorists on Iraqi soil, and sought to attack American interests in the Mideast. The files “buttress the case that the decision to oust Saddam was the right one.”

What the columnists said

The president’s “stupefying pronouncement” that the tide has turned in Iraq shows the depths of his delusion, said Carl Hiaasen in The Miami Herald. In reality, we’re mired in an endless stalemate. And “in the bitterest of ironies, the American occupation has given al Qaida a foothold in a country where the terrorist organization had never previously been tolerated.” If this is victory, what does defeat look like?

Iraq’s casualties include not just 4,000 American lives but “the good name of the United States,” said Richard Cohen in The Washington Post. The country’s reputation was badly damaged with the publication of “the revolting pictures” of Iraqi prisoners being abused by Americans in Abu Ghraib prison. Standard Operating Procedure, a forthcoming book by Philip Gourevitch and filmmaker Errol Morris, reveals that torture and abuse were tolerated, and tacitly encouraged, at the U.S. government’s highest levels. Long after this war is over, “the shame of Abu Ghraib will forever stain George Bush and his top aides.”

No one would deny that “the cost of the war in Iraq has been high, much higher than it ought to have been,” said Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. But that’s the price of “a historic, transformational victory.” Today, thanks to the U.S. overthrow of Saddam, the entire Middle East stands on the verge of a new and better era. The Iraqi people have a democratically elected government, and oil states from Dubai to Saudi Arabia are throwing off centuries of repression. And in perhaps the most hopeful sign for American security, “Iraq has proven to be a graveyard for al Qaida’s most experienced operators.”

What next?

The renewed fighting raises fears that a seven-month lull in violence, brought on by the U.S. troop buildup and a cease-fire by the forces of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is ending. Various Shiite factions, including al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, are jockeying for control of Basra’s oil revenues. Al-Sadr’s forces claim they are being targeted by political foes within the Iraqi army, and militia members loyal to the cleric said they would soon take up arms again. “The cease-fire is over,” a militiaman told The Christian Science Monitor. “We have been told to fight the Americans.”