Thinking the Unthinkable in Iraq

Editor's Note: We re-post this article as escalating violence between Iraqi factions stokes calls for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. Is the collapse of the American project unfolding in Iraq? Zachary speculates that we may be witnessing a slow-motion Dien Bien Phu, the disastrous setback that caused the French to abandon their colonial occupation of Vietnam some 50 years ago.

What will it take to get American troops out of Iraq?

Activists and commentators usually emphasize the political factors that might propel a U.S. withdrawal. A powerful faction in Congress could catch the anti-war bug and set a withdrawal date. Public opinion could sway even more decisively against the war, and the call for an exit grow so loud that a withdrawal must be orchestrated even against President Bush's wishes. Or the Iraqis somehow, against the odds, could suddenly display the resolve, competence and indeed sheer patriotism enabling them to take over the fight against Iraqi rebels and insurgents.

These three withdrawal scenarios are the only ones on the table. Either Congress revolts, the masses revolt or the Iraqi government revolts against the U.S. occupation and evicts the Americans.

We need to broaden the options. To do so we should think the unthinkable; consider the one scenario that is left out of virtually every public and private discussion of how to remove U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

That is the battlefield scenario. Call it the "Dien Bien Phu" scenario, in which American troops, tragically suffer a shocking, unexpected defeat on the ground in Iraq.

Every American wants every soldier to survive each day without harm, but the longer U.S. troops remain in Iraq -- under conditions of daily threat, where they lack protective gear and protective numbers, exposing them to deadly attack -- the greater the chances that Iraqi insurgents will deliver some devastating blow. A blow that might kill hundreds of Americans in one encounter.

All the possibilities are deeply disturbing. Insurgents could tunnel their way into the Green Zone, the fortified Baghdad neighborhood that is home to top U.S. officials, aid workers and contractors. Even in a brief time, many Americans could be killed before U.S. forces regained control. American troops might be routed in a conventional pitched battle in some Iraqi city; they could be surrounded, slaughtered, even taken prisoner in large numbers. A straightforward terrorist attack could also inflict large casualties. On October 23, 1983, 241 American servicemen were killed by suicide bombers in Lebanon. Losses on such a scale cannot be ruled out in Iraq.

To repeat for emphasis, no opponent of the war in Iraq wants American troops to suffer large casualties. Moreover, the low American casualty rate -- one or two soldiers killed a day -- may continue indefinitely. After all, President Bush has repeatedly assured the American people that the United States has adequate troops in Iraq, and that these troops are adequately protected. So there are reasons to think that low-intensity warfare, with only several deaths a week, can be sustained for a long time.

But why should a steady state of combat be sustained in Iraq? Working against the status quo is a powerful counterforce: nationalism. The United States is an occupying army in Iraq (the country's top commander, Gen. George Casey, admitted as much last fall, when he said the presence of American forces in Iraq "feeds the notion of occupation"). And occupying armies, whether real or notional, expose themselves to unexpected risks.

One of those risks is that U.S. troops may suffer unthinkable casualties in a single day or a series of attacks. Of course, some would say that such a setback, however horrible, would simply stiffen the resolve of the U.S. government and the American people to "stay the course." President Bush has already argued that the more than 2,000 Americans killed in Iraq since the war began comprise a collective reason to continue fighting in Iraq.