Saving lives or face.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

Today, there is a war raging against the U.S. occupation in Iraq. The guerrillas are increasingly sophisticated and brazen, and they seem to have some support, at least in parts of the country.

How else could you interpret the stories of Iraqis cheering over the downing of the Chinook chopper, or jumping up and down with joy after a U.S. military vehicle was blown up?

These were scenes out of Somalia or the West Bank.

This is not what the 130,000 U.S. soldiers bargained for when they were sent over to Iraq.

And this is not what the American people bargained for, either.

In selling the war, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz let on as though the occupation would be a snap, and cheap, too, with Iraqi oil paying for most of it.

None of that has happened. Instead, what materialized was this guerrilla war, fueled by the ineptitude of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz in the early days of the occupation.

Now Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are left with poor options.

They can crack down harder, which will only alienate the people of Iraq further. (Already, the occupation is making enemies, as Nir Rosen points out in this issue.)

They can send in more U.S. troops, as Senators Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman, and John McCain have advocated. (And if that doesn't spell Vietnam, I don't know what does.)

Or they can admit their blunder, withdraw many of our forces, place the United Nations in charge of rebuilding Iraq, and join a genuine multilateral peacekeeping operation in Iraq.

But this would amount to an embarrassment for Bush, and, like Lyndon Johnson before him, he would rather lose American lives than lose face.

I have a habit of reading The New York Times op-ed page every day, and sometimes it's hazardous to my health. Two recent columns almost made me physically ill.

The first was by Thomas L. Friedman on October 30. "U.S...