Chickens in a Darkening Sky

Suddenly the sky is dark with chickens coming home to roost, and bedtime reading is Thucydides' account of the disastrous Athenian siege of Syracuse. Start with the amazed discovery of the White House, the Defense Department and the permanently embedded US press corps that nations don't care to be invaded, even if they have been misgoverned by a tyrant for decades. How many Russians died defending the Soviet Union from German invasion after enduring famine and Stalin's terror? This isn't 1991, when Iraqis asked themselves, "Why die for Kuwait?"

Basra? "Military officials," ran a European press report, "later admitted that they had vastly underestimated the strength of Iraqi resistance and the loyalty of Basra's population to Saddam." The report quoted a British officer as saying "there are significant elements in Basra who are hugely loyal to the regime."

Kurdish-held northern Iraq? "Even in Kurdistan," reported the London Independent, on March 25 (in the person of my brother, Patrick Cockburn), "where the US is popular and where President Saddam committed some of his worst atrocities, there are flickers of Iraqi patriotism. A Kurdish official, who has devoted years to opposing the government in Baghdad, admitted: 'Iraqis won't like to see American soldiers ripping down posters of Saddam Hussein though they might like to do it themselves. They didn't enjoy watching the Stars and Stripes being raised near Umm Qasr.'"

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