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★阿修羅♪
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ノー天気日本の自衛隊は大丈夫ですかね。
米軍ヘリ撃墜写真と、NewYorkTimesの記事。
NEWS ANALYSIS
As Casualties in Iraq Mount, Will Resolve Falter?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/international/middleeast/03ASSE.html?hp
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
American soldiers inspecting the site near Falluja, Iraq, where a Chinook helicopter carrying G.I.'s crashed after being hit by a guerrilla missile.
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: November 3, 2003
RAWFORD, Tex., Nov. 2 ? The political challenge posed to President Bush by the deadly helicopter attack in Iraq on Sunday is this: how to keep public opinion from swinging against him over Iraq while not abandoning his quest to bring a stable democracy to that country.
Americans have been dying for months in Iraq, attacked by an enemy whose nature remains murky. But the downing of the Chinook helicopter, which killed 16 soldiers, brought the insurgency to a new level and suggested its growing effectiveness.
Up to now the American people, in their majority, have backed the Iraq campaign, and the Bush administration has vowed repeatedly to stay the course, even through an election year.
But administration officials and military commanders have also been dismissive of the insurgency in a way that may now be questioned. On Saturday, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, said the attacks were "strategically and operationally insignificant."
Whatever the merits of that claim ? and the downing of a helicopter would not seem insignificant ? it might be beside the point. The well-armed and apparently coordinated guerrilla attacks on American forces, on Iraqis who are cooperating with them, on international institutions and on ordinary civilians seem to have a common purpose: undermining American resolve and sowing doubt in Iraq and elsewhere.
Mr. Bush was informed of the attack on the helicopters while at his ranch here. A White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, later told reporters, "The terrorists seek to kill coalition forces and innocent Iraqis because they want us to run, but our will and our resolve are unshakable."
However, Kenneth Allard, a former Army colonel who teaches international security at Georgetown University, suggested that the Iraqi attacks would test American determination.
"Every single one of these attacks challenges American will, and American will is the center of gravity in this campaign," he said.
Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq is under intense partisan attack that is likely to intensify as the presidential campaign heats up.
Democrats have been particularly critical of Mr. Bush's inability to win substantial commitments from allies other than Britain for troop deployments to Iraq, a failure they trace to the administration's unwillingness to forge a true coalition before the war.
Mr. Bush is clearly sensitive to the pressure on him to bring home more American troops as soon as possible; when he was asked at his news conference last week if he could promise to have reduced the number of troops in Iraq a year from now, he dismissed it as a "trick question" and declined to answer.
One Democrat, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, said after the helicopter was downed, "The administration has no answers to the increasingly violent situation in Iraq." He added, "We need a plan."
Another candidate, Dennis J. Kucinich, said bluntly, "It is urgent for the United States to go to the U.N. with a new resolution which contains the basis of an exit strategy."
Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, has repeatedly hammered at the war strategy, influencing other candidates.
But Democrats are themselves divided over how to proceed.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, told the CBS News program "Face the Nation" on Sunday that the United States should consider temporarily increasing the number of troops it has in Iraq.
Although his opinion poll numbers are down sharply from their highs of the spring, Mr. Bush remains in a relatively strong political position, and there is no sign of a rupture in public opinion on Iraq. Public opinion within Iraq is harder to measure.
With each fresh attack, though, the pressure increases on Mr. Bush to show that he has not just a program but the determination to carry it out.
Mr. Allard argued that public opinion in the United States was vulnerable to each episode of bad news.
Similarly, he said, Mr. Bush and his team have yet to convince the Iraqi people that the United States will prevail. "If you're an Iraqi, the biggest fear in your mind is that Saddam or his cohorts might be back," Mr. Allard said. "Everything they see now could convince them that the Americans may be faint-hearted. So at the least, they hedge their bets."
Appearing on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was insistent that the attacks would have no effect on the administration's determination to see through the job in Iraq. "We can win this war," he said. "We will win this war. And the president has every intention of staying after the terrorists and the countries that harbor terrorists until we have won this war."
But if nothing else, the persistent attacks and casualties have forced the administration to acknowledge the difficulties ahead. At the news conference last week, Mr. Bush repeatedly referred to Iraq as a "dangerous" place, and he all but disowned the "Mission Accomplished" banner that hung behind him on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln when he proclaimed the end of major combat operations in May.
Administration officials have begun to emphasize that they are pressing hard for Iraqis to take more responsibility for confronting the guerrilla warfare, and that they are speeding plans to train Iraqis to handle security.
"Foreign troops in a country are unnatural," Mr. Rumsfeld said on "Fox News Sunday," referring to the presence in Iraq of American and allied troops. "The goal is to keep them there only as long as they're needed and not one day longer."
But it is not clear how capable the Iraqis will be of stabilizing the country and settling political and religious divisions, especially if the shooting and bombing goes on.
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