Back to the future? by Pete Hamill, New York Daily News 03-30-2003 Baghdad may soon look like Beirut, 1978 Ahead lies Baghdad, and for days, I've been seeing in memory the streets of Beirut in 1978. In my life, no place, before or since, was spookier. Every building I saw had been hit in the endless fighting: hotels, apartment houses, office buildings, shops, markets. Jagged holes had been blown through walls. Water fell steadily from ruptured pipes. Most surfaces were gashed by the hammering of automatic weapons. The scorched, twisted shells of cars, buses, ambulances filled the streets, rusting in the sun, and young men used them for cover to shoot and run. No street was safe. Some neighborhoods were controlled by right-wing Christian militias. Some by Shiite or Sunni or Druze Muslims. Others by men of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Almost none wore uniforms. The Israelis were invading from the south. The Syrians were easing through the seething ruins, avoiding a direct fight. There were no clear signs marking off the territories; it was possible to turn left instead of right and find yourself ambushed. I had a pass from the PLO that could get me killed by the Christian Falange. If I left a Falange street, I could be shot as a CIA agent. Across the days and deep into the nights I heard the sounds of fighting: the sudden brrrrrpppp of machine guns, the ka-pow of bazookas slamming into walls, the popping of small-arms fire, all punctuated by explosions. At dawn, women as tentative as cats eased into the silent streets, scurrying, then halting, scurrying again, then stopping to listen, then moving on again in search of bread for children. My interpreter was as spooked as I was, and it was his city. But he kept me alive. Now, to my shame, I don't even remember his name. I do remember a night when I was cut off from my hotel by savage street fighting, and in my head kept composing apologies to my daughters for the recklessness that got me killed. As it turned out, I wasn't even scratched (although I was robbed one night at gunpoint). I had seen fighting in a city, and by comparison, Vietnam had been almost orderly. Beirut in 1978 had a population of about a million. That's the same as Basra is now. Nobody knows what British troops will confront when they do go into that besieged city, and take it, block by block. Just as nobody knows what will happen in Baghdad, when the Americans start fighting their way through its streets. With a million people, Beirut was a horror. Baghdad has 5 million inhabitants. What we do know is that people will die. What we do know is that some of those brave young American soldiers we are seeing each day (in interviews with embedded reporters) will be young forever. They will not see their children graduate from college. They will not go to ballgames with their grandchildren. They will not get to read the books they intended to read. They will not get to travel to places lustrous with peace. They will die in streets whose names they will never know. And Iraqis will die, too. Some will be killed in search of bread, just as people like them once died in Beirut, or Hue, or Seoul or Anzio. And some will die fighting. They won't have to be crazed Islamic fanatics, or loyalists to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, to pick up rifles. They won't fight because some Iraqi commissar has threatened to kill their families. They will fight because it's their city, because their tribe is being attacked by another tribe, and the old primitive tribal instincts will be aroused. Such men and women — even if only a small percentage of the population — can cause extraordinary havoc. If one percent chooses to fight, that's 50,000 fighters. They could organize into small shadowy units of guerrillas — Fedayeen — showing up for mundane daily jobs, then fighting at night. They won't wear uniforms, any more than the Viet Cong wore uniforms in South Vietnam. They won't feel obliged to play by "the rules of war." Almost certainly they will try to turn Baghdad into one immense West Bank, not just until the inevitable fall of the city to the allies, and the death of Saddam Hussein, but for all the months and years that follow. Every sensible person must hope that the war ends before the battle for Baghdad. You hope that Russia or France or some other country could broker a surrender, allowing Saddam to flee (if he's alive), sending the Baath Party leadership off to Jordan and exile. But that is now a wan hope. The logic of this war demands victory. It demands grateful parades that prove that our mission truly was liberation of the Iraqi people. It demands the discovery of chemical and biological weapons. It demands the ultimate photo op: Saddam hanging upside down in a Baghdad gas station, like Mussolini, put there by furious Iraqis. For the moment, we who are safe await the conquest of Basra, and then the move upon Baghdad itself. We must follow those brave embedded reporters on the ground, as they move with the troops. We must put up with all those unemployed generals moving pointers and arrows on televised maps, in emulation of John Madden at a football game. We who are safe, far from rockets and mortars and incoming rounds, can — and must — debate the justice or motives of the war. But it would be obscene to root for American casualties to prove some case about the recklessness of the war. Those young men and women did not pick this fight. They did not choose to go to Iraq. They swore an oath when they joined the military and they are keeping their sworn promises. We must honor their valor and fidelity as they move toward the city of Baghdad, five times larger than Beirut. May each of them be safe. May each of them grow old. Originally published on March 30, 2003