- Two weeks into the war in Iraq, some senior military
commanders are beginning to admit that American understanding of the Arab
world is limited and that they still have to convince the Iraqis that they
are liberators, not occupiers.
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- In one of the most low-key assessments of the war so
far, a high-ranking American officer said it would be "unrealistic"
to expect Baghdad to fall within days.
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- "There is a big cultural difference between the
US and the Arab world. That makes it hard," said the highly experienced
officer, who has been closely involved in the planning of the war.
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- "We Americans are not very good at judging what
a totalitarian regime is like, looks like and acts like. There is an information
psychology front that we are trying to push but we are probably not as
sophisticated about it as we would want to be."
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- The officer described the Iraqi regime as "resilient"
but said it relied on immense pressure to maintain loyalty. Iraqis would
turn against their government "sooner or later", he said.
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- In a rare departure from the intense campaign run by
the Pentagon and Central Command in Qatar to present the motives for war
in the best light, he accepted that many Iraqis were still not convinced
that the US and British forces on the ground were coming as liberators.
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- "Are we getting the message across to the educated
people? We are. But to the people that want to be moved by emotion and
believe that there are no good motives and think that the US are here for
oil and only for oil we have got to get the message across better,"
he said.
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- He compared the Iraqis living under Saddam Hussein's
regime to the Germans in the 1930s living under Adolf Hitler and said that
in both countries the extent of repression and a sense of nationalism both
severely limited resistance. "The system of control, the system of
oppression, the system of nationalistic symbolism prevents them from taking
out the leadership," he said.
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- Intercepts of communications between Republican Guard
units have indicated they are being weakened by the intensive ground and
air assault. But the regime was not about to collapse, the officer said.
"You immediately come to the conclusion that you have immediately
got to push on this house of cards and it will immediately come down. That
is simply not true.
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- "If you have an unrealistic expectation that Baghdad
is going to fall in three days I might describe it as wrong."
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- Many analysts expected the Shias in the south of Iraq
in particular to welcome the arrival of British and American forces because
of the persecution they have suffered at the hands of the regime. But the
south has provided some of the stiffest resistance of the war so far.
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- The officer admitted one reason was the British and American
military's failure to back the uprising after the 1991 Gulf War. "We
let them down in 1991," the officer said. "When you let someone
down once you don't want to let them down twice."
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- He said that the Iraqis operated a "very powerful
enforcement and repression system" that discouraged the Shias from
rising up and that many had fresh memories of the brutality with which
the 1991 uprising was crushed. "The average Iraqi only knows Saddam
and Saddam has won the lottery every time. Until we prove that he is not
going to be a survivor some people are not going to believe it," he
said.
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- The officer also appeared to distance himself from the
increasingly critical vocabulary used by generals giving the daily briefings
at Central Command, who have begun to label Iraqi paramilitaries as "terrorist
death squads".
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- "We have to watch about falling into the trap of
a certain type of language that describes things," he said.
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- He said the decision to rush armoured forces north towards
Baghdad in the first hours of the ground invasion was an example of commanders
taking one of the "windows of opportunity" sometimes presented
during a war. "You will have to let historians judge how all that
worked out. It was an attempt to take advantage of a very interesting window
of opportunity that opened up. I salute the man that took it."
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927774,00.html
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