An excellent, very well written article from the International Herald Tribune, William Pfaff: The philosophers of chaos reap a whirlwind. Because it is so clear and succinct, I quote it in full:

"The intensification of violence in Iraq is the logical outcome of the Bush administration's choice in 2001 to treat terrorism as a military problem with a military solution - a catastrophic oversimplification.

Choosing to invade two Islamic states, Afghanistan and Iraq, neither of which was responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, inflated the crisis, in the eyes of millions of Muslims, into a clash between the United States and Islamic society.

The two wars did not destroy Al Qaeda. They won it new supporters. The United States is no more secure than it was before.

The wars opened killing fields in two countries that no one knows how to shut down, with American forces themselves increasingly the victims. This was not supposed to happen.

The killing was one way in September 2001: Al Qaeda killed Americans and others in New York and Washington. Later in 2001 and in 2002, the killing was overwhelmingly in the other direction. Taliban soldiers, Al Qaeda members and Afghan bystanders were the victims, in uncounted numbers.

This year began the same way, but now things have changed. Americans are no longer attacking Iraq from the unreachable sanctuaries provided by technological superiority and command of the air. They are on the ground, among 23 million Iraqis, the objects of elusive and unidentifiable attacks. This is what the U.S. Army has sought to avoid ever since the Vietnam War.

There is no victory in sight, not even a definition of victory. If Saddam Hussein were captured or killed, Washington would claim a victory, but that isn't a victory over terrorism. A functioning democracy in Iraq, with a reconstructed economy, would be a form of victory, but the chance that this will be achieved is remote, even if the country can be pacified.

This outcome was foreseen. It was dismissed in Washington because of the radicalism of the neoconservative project, taken up by President George W. Bush with seemingly little or no grasp of its sources, objectives or assumptions.

The neoconservatives believe that destruction produces creation. They believe that to smash and conquer is to be victorious. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel is an influence, although one would think they might have seen that a policy of "smash and conquer" has given him no victories in Lebanon or the Palestinian territories.

They believe that the United States has a real mission, to destroy the forces of unrighteousness. They also believe - and this is their great illusion - that such destruction will free the natural forces of freedom and democracy.
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In this, they are influenced by the Trotskyist version of Marxist millenarianism that was the intellectual seedbed of the neoconservative movement. But their idea is also very American, as they are credulous followers of Woodrow Wilson, a sentimental utopian who really believed that he had been sent by God to lead mankind to a better world.
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They resemble Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, who in 1997 expressed astonishment at the gangster capitalism that had emerged in the former Soviet Union, and which still exists. He said he had assumed that dismantling communism would "automatically establish a free-market entrepreneurial system."

Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and their neoconservative colleagues in Washington assumed that destroying Saddam's regime would automatically establish a liberal democracy in Iraq. But wrecking a society's structure produces wreckage, not utopian change. To believe otherwise leads one to conduct a foreign policy of global destabilization and disruption that creates political anarchy, human suffering and new foyers of violence and terrorism capable of overtaking Americans, as well as those people America intends to benefit.

How is Iraq to be put together again? Washington doesn't want the United Nations, and America's prevailing insecurity deters other governments and international institutions from supporting the reconstruction effort.

What is the exit strategy? There never was one. For the philosophers of chaos in Washington, who created this situation, there is an instinctual reaction to their failure: escalation, and the pursuit of elusive victory by mounting new attacks elsewhere.

For Washington politicians, there is another possibility: Find and kill Saddam, and simply leave Iraq - whose turbulent and ungrateful people, Bush might announce, had shown themselves unworthy of America's efforts.

Does this today seem unthinkable? If Iraq is still going badly in 2004, when the president is looking for re-election, it will be considered."