Washington loves to panic over impending snowstorms, ongoing heat waves, the Redskins' playoff chances, and policy implications. The panic has set in on Iraq because American policy there carries enough of a whiff of incoherence about it not only to embolden critics, but cause formerly stalwart supporters to express doubts. It's one thing when Senator Ted Kennedy or Susan Sontag uses the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to argue for moral equivalence between the Bush Administration and Saddam Hussein's regime. It is another when conservative allies (of all flavors) start deserting President George W. Bush in his moment of need.
They have reasonable concerns. Is the United States attempting to achieve a utopian end with a very limited set of means (with the ties between the two not patently obvious or frequently articulated)? The tactics vary enough to give the impression of convenience (we use agents of the Hussein regime in Fallujah but do the dirty work ourselves in Karbala) rather than well-thought out operational flexibility. The CPA/Pentagon arrangement about who is in charge of what and answers to whom violates the age-old dictate, "if you can't explain the chain of command in ten seconds or less it won't work in a crisis." The only Iraqi ally almost any American can name has just been dropped, and the rest appear incapable of accomplishing much of anything outside their tribe or ethnic group. Finally, the mounting sacrifice incurred in blood and treasure appears to many Americans as if it might be suffered in vain if we fail, run, or soldier on to no certain end.
