The US faces a hybrid of religious fundamentalism and nationalist dictatorship, writes Lara Marlowe
When the history of America's war in Iraq is written, October 27th will be recorded as the day the opponents of the US occupation demonstrated their ability to claim lives on an unprecedented scale, in a series of coordinated attacks.
Not by chance, the suicide bombings that killed dozens of Iraqi civilians and an American soldier were staged on the first morning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In Afghanistan and Algeria, fundamentalists have always considered Ramadan a propitious time for Jihad. Earlier this month, Iraqi colleagues told me they feared a flare-up when the fasting ritual started.
Nor was the first target chosen - the International Committee of the Red Cross - accidental. The cross is the symbol of crusaders, of Christianity. Saddam Hussein portrayed himself as the modern incarnation of Salaheddin, the Kurd who drove the crusaders from Jerusalem.
Recent comments by Lieut Gen William Boykin, the US deputy undersecretary of defence for intelligence, revived the spectre of a war between Christianity and Islam in Iraq. Gen Boykin told US fundamentalist groups that Muslims worship "an idol" and are allied with "a guy called Satan". Gen Boykin received a mild rebuke; if the Bush administration were serious about avoiding a religious war, he would have resigned.
Now the neo-conservatives who drive Iraq policy have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the wake of September 11th, without evidence, they labelled Baghdad the "capital of world terrorism". While no rational person wanted Saddam Hussein to remain in power, yesterday's killings were terrible confirmation that the manner of his overthrow unleashed forces that Washington cannot control. Imaginative diplomacy could have devised a less catastrophic way of removing the dictator.
With Iraqi civilian casualties since the fall of Saddam now well into the thousands, pronouncements by the US civil administrator Mr Paul Bremer sound hollow. "Life is much better for the Iraqis today than it was six months ago and much better than it was a year ago," he asserted on Sunday. Really?
By invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam without a careful plan for what came after, the US spawned a poisonous hybrid of the two most potent forces in the Arab world: religious fundamentalism and nationalist dictatorship.
Meanwhile, Washington ignores the one issue that could give it a modicum of credibility among Arabs and Muslims. Israeli Defence Forces have since mid-October rendered homeless at least 1,240 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Not a peep from the Bush administration.
The attack on the al-Rashid Hotel on Sunday targeted Mr Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary who has helped to make the security of Israel the US's top foreign policy objective, and the ideological force behind the war in Iraq. The al-Rashid is no longer a hotel but a fortified barracks surrounded by acres of barbed wire, to which even accredited journalists are not admitted. The rockets fired at the al-Rashid missed Mr Wolfowitz's suite by only one floor, and US officials suggest the attack took up to two months to plan. Was there just a tinge of racism in their surprise that adversaries could be, as one US general put it, so clever? The US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell admitted: "We did not expect it would be quite this intense this long."
And yet at every step of the way, the US was warned of the chaos it risked creating; by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, by European and Arab allies. Mr Powell's own State Department, it emerged last week, predicted widespread looting and lawlessness in the wake of Saddam's overthrow, and reported just how run-down Iraq's infrastructure was. The Pentagon didn't want to listen. The attack on the al-Rashid was also predicted by US military intelligence, yet there was no attempt to move Mr Wolfowitz to another location, or step up patrols around the perimeter.
Can it get worse? Tragically, the answer is yes. Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said last week that his men now face 35 attacks daily - that's up from 25 attacks per day at the beginning of October. Paradoxically, one of the greatest dangers would be a sudden US withdrawal in the wake of huge casualties, leaving Iraq in flames. The other nightmare scenario would be a Sunni-Shia war grafted onto the present conflict. There have been violent incidents between the two Muslim communities, and it's easy to imagine barricades on Baghdad's boulevards. Aadhamiya, where Saddam made his last public appearance, could become the heart of urban Sunni "resistance". Sadr City, the Shia slum of two million, is already a semi-autonomous entity.
Yesterday's events showed yet again the urgency of establishing a timetable to transfer power from Mr Bremer to a credible Iraqi government. Washington argues that the Iraqis are not ready. This may be true, but it's hard to see how, in a constantly deteriorating environment, they will be more ready later. By setting a deadline for elections, the US would at least signal a willingness to end the occupation, and win the measured loyalty of some Iraqis.
The problem for Washington is that nobody wants to die for Iraq. Not the UN staff, who despite defiant statements by Mr Annan after the August 19th bombing of their headquarters, quietly scurried off to Amman. Not the ICRC, which last night announced it was withdrawing all non-Iraqi personnel from the country. Yesterday's attacks are sure to spark more mass departures.
Although the Texas oil company Halliburton has engaged in outrageous over-billing, as reported in this newspaper by Conor O'Clery, it will be hard to find entrepreneurs willing to risk their lives for profit.
That leaves the US military, who don't want to die for Iraq either.
Whether for Allah, Saddam Hussein or just plain vengeance, five suicide bombers proved yesterday that they were not afraid to die.
And that is their most powerful weapon.
Lara Marlowe is an Irish Times correspondent. She covered the Iraq war and its aftermath in March and April, and returned to Baghdad for the first two weeks of October.