Things Fall Apart

Six Iraqi cities have fighting, the New York Times reports.

American forces in Iraq came under fierce attack on Tuesday, with as many as 12 marines killed in Ramadi, near Baghdad, and with Shiite militiamen loyal to a rebel cleric stepping up a three-day-old assault in the southern city of Najaf, American officials said.

In Falluja, where last week American security contractors were killed and their bodies mutilated, American warplanes fired rockets at houses, and marines drove armored columns into the heart of the city, where they fought block by block to flush out insurgents. Several arrests were made.

It was one of the most violent days in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, with half a dozen cities ignited. One of the biggest questions at day's end was the role of most of the majority Shiites previously thought to be relatively sympathetic to American goals.

The heaviest fighting raged in Falluja and Ramadi, strongholds of the Sunni minority favored by Mr. Hussein that have been flash points of anti-American resistance.

President Bush, meanwhile, seems to think it's no big deal:

In the wake of the burst of violence, President Bush, speaking in El Dorado, Ark., on Tuesday, said he did not foresee changing plans to turn over sovereignty to Iraq on June 30.

Bush is between a rock and a hard place. He insisted on the June 30th date originally because he wanted sovereignty transferred well before the elections so that he could boast that he had liberated Iraq from the evil dictator Saddam and fulfilled his promise to return the country to the Iraqi people. So intent was the Administration on this political strategy that they clung to it despite all indications that there will not be time to put together a stable government that can stand on its own. If the administration has a plan to deal with the deteriorating situation in Iraq, we have yet to see it.

Now Bush's stubbornness and his reckless pursuit of short-term domestic political gain are coming home to roost. If the Administration announces that it is going to delay handing over sovereignty, it will suggest that the Americans can be pushed around by violence and threats of violence. At the same time some Iraqis will opportunistically accuse the United States of going back on its word and seeking to make Iraq into a colony or a puppet state. On the other hand, if Bush sticks to his guns and refuses to budge, he may not have a viable government to hand power over to. Then the Administration will find itself forced either to take the reins of power again and rule the country de facto or risk the very real possibility that Iraq will descend into civil war.

The predicament in which the U.S. now finds itself is a direct result of colossal hubris, short-sighted policies, and lack of preparation for the period following the fall of Baghdad. Members of the Bush Administration foolishly assumed that wars of preemption would be easy to win and could be fought on the cheap. How wrong they were. Saddam is long gone, but in his place Bush has created an awful mess, and one can have no confidence that he has any idea of how to clean it up. Our country and the Iraqis will pay for his arrogant folly for many years to come.