In Iraq today, the United States is facing what amounts to a brand new kind of warfare. The good news is that this tactic cannot possibly defeat the United States’ armed forces. The bad news is that it isn’t even intended to: Its aim is to break the will of the American people.
This new kind of warfare is suicide bombing. Now, suicidal attacks are by no means unheard of in human history. As recently as World War II, in the last stages of the battle in the Pacific, Japan inspired “kamikaze” (“divine wind”) pilots to crash their planes into American naval vessels. And, from time to time, across the years, individuals have used suicidal tactics to insure that their attacks on enemy units or installations will succeed.
But it is only recently, in the Palestinian intifada against Israel, that suicide bombing has been elevated to the level of an entirely new tactic, to be employed on a sustained basis against the enemy. And now, it appears, that tactic has been imported into Iraq and deployed against our forces there, by elements loyal to Saddam Hussein or otherwise dedicated to ousting the Americans.
It is not clear, in the case of Iraq, how long the new tactic can be sustained. It obviously requires a considerable pool of individuals ready to sacrifice their own lives in order to inflict serious damage on the enemy. Of course, every soldier knows that his or her life may be forfeited in battle, according to (unpredictable) circumstances. But the suicide bomber knows in advance that his life is sure to be lost – a foreknowledge that civilized nations normally try to spare their soldiers. Recruits for such duty clearly must be highly motivated.
America’s top commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, has estimated that there are not more than 5,000 resisters scattered through Iraq, and it’s a safe bet that not all of them are prepared to be suicide bombers. But some of them clearly are – indeed, already have been. We must assume there are enough to sustain a campaign of suicide bombings for a significant time.
That has been the case in Israel, and the Israelis, who are tough, have been unable to devise any response capable of halting the attacks. They have simply had to learn to live with random deaths of members of their military and civilian populations, consoling themselves with retaliatory measures that do not end the problem.
It may well be that the American people will have to accustom themselves to a similar grim experience in Iraq – on top of the ordinary attacks by rocket-propelled grenades, land mines, etc., by guerrillas who hope to escape. The small but steady loss of American lives will become a part of this nation’s daily experience, and the question will inevitably arise: Can we stand it?
The Israelis stand it because they simply have no choice: The attacks are launched against them in their homeland. And that raises a still grimmer specter for Americans: What if the fanatics of the worldwide Islamist jihad manage to bring the tactic of suicide bombings to bear on the American homeland? What if suicide bombers begin to appear in the crowded cafes of New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles?
Washington wouldn’t be quite as easy for them as Jerusalem – or Baghdad, for that matter. Most of the suicidal fanatics are Arabs, who can melt easily into the crowd on a Middle Eastern street, with explosives strapped to their bodies under loose-flowing clothes. But they would attract quick attention on, say, Capitol Hill. On the other hand, a truck loaded with explosives and driven by a suicide bomber could certainly crash through the window of some trendy Washington restaurant and kill scores of influential diners.
To repeat: We are facing a new kind of warfare, which will test not our power but our fortitude. The World Trade Center was only the beginning.
