LAST WEEKEND'S attack on a United States helicopter in Iraq may have moved the war into a new phase. The American casualty-rate is rising sharply, and some eyewitness accounts suggest that American troops are now coming under more or less constant attack. While U.S. President George W. Bush declared the main part of fighting over on May 1, even he is now starting to distance himself from that comment.
At least 250 American troops and thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the war began in March. Last Sunday 18 more Americans were killed in what has now become a guerrilla war; 15 of those were shot down in the helicopter near Baghdad in the second biggest one-day toll of the conflict.
Plainly, the war is anything but over. While it remains a low-intensity conflict, its intensity is nonetheless rising. Although much of Iraq is now relatively stable, there are parts of it that remain essentially beyond the control of occupation forces.
American commanders maintain that from a strategic and operational standpoint, the attacks amount to little. This may be so. Politically, though, they are very significant. While the casualty-rate in Iraq pales in comparison to the worst years of the Vietnam War, Americans have been primed by years of talk of 'surgical strikes', and the experiences of air wars, which devastated enemies but left the U.S. without a loss. As a result, there is little appetite for a drawn-out conflict involving mounting losses.
Accordingly, the pressure on Mr. Bush will continue to rise. He faces a dilemma: pull out, and risk a serious strategic setback, now that he has created a political vacuum in Iraq; or, continue to prosecute the war, and risk the enmity of the American people in an election year. It is an unenviable position, but it also one into which he got himself.
And a precise role for the United Nations is still to be determined.
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