Iraq's Not Vietnam
Yet if this isn't Vietnam, neither is it the Afghanistan campaign, where we were hailed as liberators. I was in Afghanistan during that war, and the difference is manifest. Afghans were giddy and jubilant, while Iraqis now are typically sullen and distrustful — and thirsty.

And that's our biggest long-term problem. For all the talk about our forces being short of armored divisions, or our supply lines being stretched so taut that marines were down to one meal a day, those are tactical issues that will be forgotten six months from now. The fundamental and strategic challenge is that so far many ordinary Iraqis regard us, as best I can tell, as conquerors rather than liberators.

Vice President Dick Cheney said on "Meet the Press" on March 16 that "we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." And Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said of the Iraqis in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on March 11: "Like the people of France in the 1940's, they view us as their hoped-for liberator. They know that America will not come as a conqueror."

It's too early to know definitively what Iraqis think, and for now, the signals are mixed, with jubilation in Najaf and anger in many other areas. Iraq these days is almost as varied, tribal and polarized a society as the U.S. (a California bumper sticker declares, "Regime change starts at home"). All in all, most Iraqis seem watchful and ambivalent, as reflected in this conversation I had near Safwan with a Shiite farmer in his 40's.

"Money was O.K. under Saddam," he said. "Freedom was not so good. As a people, we were doing O.K. before the invasion. But the war upsets our lives. It brings destruction."

"Do you think the aftermath of the war will bring improvements?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Only God knows."

"So do you think Saddam is a good president or a bad president?"

"Saddam is a good president." Long pause. "Well, maybe not good. So-so."

Fear of Saddam explains some of the reticence (half the Iraqis I've asked have said Saddam will win the war), but you also see nationalism fermenting in Iraqis who proclaim that they will fight U.S. occupation the way Palestinians fight Israeli occupation. The risk is not that America will lose the war, but that it will never fully establish a peace. Already the coalition-controlled south is, particularly after dusk, a Hobbesian world of banditry and anarchy. One Arab expert dourly suggested to me that Iraq could emerge as "another Lebanon."…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/04/opinion/04KRIS.html