The Terror of Guerilla Warfare
This is not to suggest the efforts in Iraq are a lost cause. They are not. It simply suggests now is not the time for politicians to gloat over imagined triumphs because that simply gives the other side what it wants - an opportunity to respond: "not so quickly!". Wasn't it obvious as long ago as last April that there were reasons other than US-paid bribes to Iraqi generals to explain why neither the army nor the fanatical Fedayeen Saddam presented much battlefield opposition? They knew they need only wait for the American appetite for quick and showy victory to be slaked. Then the real war would begin. Did anyone seriously believe the guerilla warfare would end simply because Saddam Hussein was dragged from his spider hole? That too was a myth because the process already was in play, and probably even before 20 March 2003 Mr. Hussein's conduct was irrelevant to its goals.
Therefore do not be surprised if this trend of hostage taking continues and intensifies in conjunction with more truck bombings and acts of terrorism against "complicit" Iraqis. One factor that makes this all the more probable is the increased use of private sector government contract workers to perform tasks previously designated to the military. The precise status of these contract workers is rather ambiguous. For example, how should their interaction with various media outlets be controlled? Should they be bound by the military rules of quasi-censorship, or should they have full rights to convey information to sources outside their countries of operation? Recently a contract worker in Kuwait sent a US newspaper a photo of US military personnel loading flag-draped cofins into a plane for transport to the US. The day after the newspaper printed the photo - which it presented very tactfully in the context that the remains of the deceased in Iraq were treated with great care and reverence rather than presenting the photo in the context of anti-war editorializing or simply printing the photo without context - the contract worker was fired from her job. Her son told the newspaper that he believed his mother did the right thing by providing the photo to demonstrate the realities of the war zone, and seeing the photo encouraged rather than dissuaded his plans to join the Marines to fight terrorists. As civilians, these contract workers lack many of the internationally accepted "niceties" that must be extended to military
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