EDITORIAL
U.S. in Iraq: history not very encouraging

Fighting an insurgency, said the famous Lawrence of Arabia, is "like eating soup with a knife." Iraq is hardly the first time hit-and-run ambushes and roadside bombs have threatened to demoralize occupying troops.

A recent statement by the ranking Marine in Iraq, Lt. Gen. John Sattler, that the retaking of Fallujah has "broken the back of the insurgency" needs some historical context.

The 11-day operation destroyed the insurgents' base, Sattler said, depriving them of "safe haven" and making it "very hard for them to operate" in the rest of Iraq.

We hope he's right. Certainly American forces fought bravely and with great skill.

Of course, it'll be a while before we can be sure what's happened to the hearts and minds of the liberated residents of Fallujah, whose city now lies in ruins.

It's also clear that the top guerrilla commanders and an undetermined number of their fighters managed to slip out of Fallujah to fight another day. The Pentagon estimates the remaining number of hard-core fighters in Iraq to be roughly 10,000, and they've stolen all the weapons and ammo they can use.

"If seizing cities was the key to success in a counterinsurgency," Dartmouth professors Daryl G. Press and Benjamin Valentino wrote in a recent article for The New York Times, "one might have expected a French victory after the battle of Algiers in 1957, an American victory after the defeat of North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces in Hue in 1968, and a Russian victory over the Chechens after the retaking of Grozny in 1995. Instead, the French and Americans lost, and the war in Chechnya drags on."

Indeed, the history of counterinsurgency by powerful armies since World War II isn't encouraging. Of seven major wars, four (the U.S. in Vietnam, the French in Indochina and Algeria, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan) were outright losses; two (Israel in the occupied territories and Russia in Chechnya) grind on without much hope; and only one — the British in Malaya — succeeded. That success may be because the majority Malays didn't like the Chinese guerrillas any more than they liked the British.

So do Gen. Sattler's comments about success in Fallujah amount to wishful thinking? What might be an interesting parallel occurred in Vietnam during the lunar new year in 1968. The communists abandoned classic guerrilla tactics to attack Saigon and 30 provincial capitals, suffering huge losses. The result was the closest the communists came to defeat.

But American commanders didn't realize the extent of the communist disaster until long after the war.

American troops are forecast to remain in Iraq for four, six, perhaps 10 years. This prospect is not encouraging, given the history of counterinsurgency — and unlikely, as Americans recoil at seeing the steady number of loved ones lost, and a copious draining of the national treasury.

We hope Gen. Sattler is right in saying that we've turned the corner in Iraq, and that the Jan. 30 election will prove the beginning of the insurgency's end. But we musn't be too surprised if, like so many counterinsurgency commanders before him, he is wrong.