An instructive firefight.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Coalition occupation of Iraq

George Bush may never be able to awaken from his Iraq nightmare, as the insurgents continue to disrupt the occupation and kill U.S. and allied personnel. Bush is in a lose-lose situation.

Take the firefight in Samara, Iraq, on November 30.

We don't know for sure how many insurgents the U.S. soldiers killed, but we do know they killed at least a few civilians, including one seventy-one-year-old Shiite Iranian, who was on a pilgrimage to a mosque, and a woman who worked at a pharmaceutical factory.

U.S. soldiers managed to wound other civilians. The London Independent interviewed a little boy with bullet holes in both his legs. He was shot outside a mosque, where he was standing with his dad, who was killed.

The U.S. military seems to think the raid was a great success.

"They attacked, and they were killed," said General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I think it will be instructive to them."

But some Iraqi civilians are learning a different lesson. They are learning to hate their occupiers.

"If I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself," one shopkeeper told The New York Times. The shopkeeper said he saw U.S. soldiers kill two Iraqi civilians.

Bush and the Joint Chiefs can't seem to understand the essential dynamic of this insurgency. The more brutally the U.S. tries to crush the insurgency, the more outraged Iraq's citizens will become, and the more recruits the insurgency will find.

That is the instructive lesson of Samarra.

Meanwhile, Bush's claim that he wants to install democracy in Iraq gets more difficult to sustain by the day.

The Bush Administration fears that a direct election would bring to power a Shiite whom Washington might not be able to push around. That leader could align with Iran, or renationalize industries, or order the U.S. troops out. And Bush wants none of that. So he ordered Paul Bremer...