Today, Iraq is on fire with escalating violence in the holy month. The kidnappings, mortar attacks and roadside bombings continue. 

The Iraqis have endured a further 12 months of deteriorating security, an upward spiral of violence, an epidemic of kidnappings of Iraqi (not to mention Arab and foreign) nationals, and the grotesque emergence for the first time in Iraq's history of the suicide bomb. The deployment by US forces, helicopter gunships and F16s against civilians, reminds Iraqis of the brutality of state-sponsored violence.

Widespread, popular sentiment against the foreign occupation of Iraq does not translate into the legitimization of the coalition forces. There is always a risk of imperialism when people speak for others in the name of national liberation.

Most of the current resentment of the occupation is provoked by the heavy-handed military tactics of US forces and their implicit assumption that every Iraqi is a potential enemy.

Many people see the ongoing war in Iraq as a disaster. With more than 1,000 American soldiers dead, 10,000 coalition troops wounded, a military price tag of more than US$90 billion, and the main reason for going to war dismissed as a massive intelligence failure, the concepts of democracy and liberty lie buried in the sands of Iraq.

Today, the war in Iraq is being fought by a very different all-volunteer force, which makes up a smaller percentage of the overall population than in any major combat conflict. With the military severely overextended, the US troops are being recycled through the combat zones and subjected to multiple combat tours.

The United States has not transferred power to Iraqis. It has not put Saddam Hussein's fate into Iraqi hands. It has not asked the UN to play a bigger role in the reconstruction. It has been reluctant to forge a peace deal with the insurgents in Fullajah.

After a long series of mistakes and reverses on the ground, the Bush administration is now focused on creating a representative Iraqi Government through elections, supporting it with a quick infusion of reconstruction funds and training enough military and security forces to defend it from Baathist insurgents, Islamic extremists and foreign terrorists.

The war in Iraq is the most critical issue in the Nov. 2 election. Despite their dramatic debate over whether the invasion of Iraq was a necessity or a mistake, US President George W. Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry essentially agree on what US goals and strategy there should be in the coming year or two.

Bush has been stronger in promising to stick with the mission in Iraq until the country is secure and "on the path to democracy." Although Bush appears determined to fight the terrorists and insurgents, a quick success seems to be almost impossible unless US forces are prepared to destroy the enemy's bases and restore the government's authority across the country.

Bush has consistently bungled the job of reconstruction, in part because of his unwillingness to commit enough troops to ensure security and in part because of a failure to listen to or fully involve leaders and experts from outside the Pentagon in the effort, ranging from the United Nations and the World Bank to Iraqis themselves.

It's still not clear, however, that the Bush administration is willing or able to execute the nation-building that must accompany the military strategy.

The reliance on military solutions alone to confront real or presumed security threats have proven to be as defective an idea as much as deep disdain for diplomacy. Murderous chaos in postwar Iraq exposed the limits of US military force, its technical superiority notwithstanding.

US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior officials have begun speaking of replacing US forces with Iraqi troops and hinting that the opportunity for Iraqis to establish new institutions with American help should be limited.

A large part of the problem in Iraq is that the United States does not have enough troops and it does not have any troops trained in peacekeeping. The number of coalition troops in Iraq is falling and is likely to drop further.

Instead of producing an exit strategy that would hold out the hope of British troops getting out of Iraq, the British Government pushed them even deeper into insurgent territory. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's response to US request for British troops to be redeployed in central Iraq shows he has learned nothing from the debacle of the past two years.

So long as Bush maintains his go-it-alone approach, there is no chance that the United States is going to be able to cede to Iraqis meaningful control over their country. And Bush shows no signs of altering his stance.

Instead of concentrating all energies and resources to fight the strange, stealthy, and stateless network that perpetrated the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States launched military assaults against the two states of Afghanistan and Iraq.

It has long been obvious that the allegations about Saddam Hussein's dangerous weapons and alliance with Osama bin Laden were false. Bipartisan reports from the 9/11 commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that there was no operational relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and no link at all between Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Stability and security have become US obsessions. American politicians increasingly see the promotion of democracy abroad as a threat to both of these goals, with the result that it is becoming a cause with a rapidly dwindling constituency. The war in Iraq has certainly weakened support even further. It is a sad irony that the political will to promote democracy abroad was an intellectual casualty of a war whose promoters claimed was waged in the name of democracy.

(Shenzhen Daily October 26, 2004)