Deaglán de Bréadún weighs the prospects of an early conclusion to the Iraqi conflict
The air assault on the headquarters of the Iraqi Olympic Committee in Baghdad this week had a bitter-sweet irony that may have escaped the protagonists, enmeshed as they are in conflict. The Olympic ideal is about proving your superiority by peaceful means; in ancient Greece a truce was declared to allow competitors from different city-states to take part in safety.
At this stage of the war there does not seem to be any peaceful way out. President Bush is in warrior mode, proclaiming his intention to proceed to victory and liberate the people of Iraq, whether they like it or not.
The Iraqi regime also, having failed to show the requisite alacrity and enthusiasm for disarmament, is now being forced to cope with an assault from the most powerful military machine ever constructed. The oppressors are being oppressed.
Much has been made of the initial setbacks for the coalition. The military leaders are putting a brave face on the situation and insisting stoutly that nothing has happened which was not anticipated in the original plan. But there are persistent reports of disagreements about strategy between the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and his military commanders, including Gen Tommy Franks.
There will always be tensions between the politicians and the generals in a conflict like this. Mr Rumsfeld reportedly put his faith in a high-tech approach involving a relatively small contingent of soldiers, while the military people essentially wanted to flood Iraq with troops.
Unlike the Bush administration, the military leaders do not have to consider the next presidential election. It can be taken for granted that the president recalls very keenly that his father won the first Gulf War but lost the White House. He will not want that to happen to himself!
A quick victory using smart bombs and missiles, with the minimum of casualties among US troops, must have looked like exactly the right prescription before taking to the hustings next year, not to mention all the other advantages in terms of asserting US hegemony in the Middle East, safeguarding oil supplies at a reasonable price, finding a new pole of stability to replace an increasingly shaky-looking Saudi Arabia, settling accounts with Arab nationalism and enhancing the long-term security of Israel.
And all you had to do to advance this agenda was land your tanks and troops and race to Baghdad. The quick-fix mentality was evident even before the war began in earnest with an opportunist attempt to "take out" Saddam and his circle with an air strike.
The repressive but wily dictator who has been in or close to power for decades was never going to be easy to eliminate. While we have no definitive proof that he survived the attack, the robust nature of Iraq's defence suggests that he has or, if not, that it has not made a lot of difference. Spurious reports that Tariq Aziz had fled into exile lend support to the theory that most of what we hear about the fate of individual members of the regime is black propaganda.
The coalition may be winning military battles on the ground but the Iraqis, without trying very hard, are winning the propaganda war.
The alleged shoot-to-kill episode at Najaf involving the deaths of at least seven women and children dominated the question-and-answer session at yesterday's briefing here in US Central Command headquarters in Doha. One does not recall such episodes, if there were any, being highlighted in the Anglo-American liberation of France.
The basic reality remains that the coalition has sufficient force to steamroll its way to victory. Accurate casualty figures are hard to come by, but the Iraqis are claiming that about 600 of their civilians have been killed, compared with up to 100 dead or missing among coalition military personnel. Leaving aside the number of deaths so far among Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries, this indicates that a determined attempt to take Baghdad could mean that the ratio of deaths between civilians and coalition soldiers would be roughly six to one.
Since there is a general expectation that a considerable number of US and British personnel will die in bitter street fighting in the Iraqi capital, the level of civilian casualties is potentially very high indeed.
One alternative would be for coalition forces to pull up at the gates of Baghdad and sit there indefinitely. Could public opinion in the West sustain a long siege any more than high military casualties? Probably not. A more horrific option would be to use even more destructive missiles against Baghdad, such as the notorious MOAB (massive ordnance air-blast bomb) with its Hiroshima-like mushroom cloud (there are suggestions, so far unconfirmed, that it may have been dropped already).
A third option, perhaps the least likely, would be to return to the United Nations and hope that the Security Council could salvage something from the mess. Since that would represent a moral victory for Saddam, it would be the last course the US would want to take although it might prove to have attractions for senior British politicians at some future stage.
The absence of a quick victory is having destabilising effects on public opinion in the Arab countries and, although governments in this region can and often do ignore the feelings of their citizens, there have been potentially significant interventions from the Egyptians and the Syrians. Despite being rather bluntly threatened by the US, the Syrians have declared themselves in solidarity with the Iraqis.
The comments of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak predicting "100 bin Ladens" as a result of this war were extremely sharp and pointed, considering the close relationship between his country and the US. The Iranians, who might not have been unhappy to see Saddam gone in a brief campaign, must be giving deeper thought to the implications of having a massive invasion force encamped in a neighbouring country.
"It has gone beyond Saddam," a respected Middle East analyst told me. "Nobody can stand back and see an army invading an Arab country."
Time will tell if the rhetoric of various governments means anything. Meanwhile, back in the US there are reports of schadenfreude in circles close to the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, at the criticisms being levelled against Mr Rumsfeld. Like Gordon Brown in the British government, Mr Powell is officially "on message" in support of the war but could well benefit politically if it all goes wrong.
In the meantime, the outlook remains one of more fighting, more death and destruction and continuing progress toward the potential horror of a major engagement in Baghdad. When the Big Push may come is a matter of speculation although informed opinion here currently expects a major development within a week or 10 days. But to return to the Olympic analogy, what was originally intended as a sprint may be turning into a marathon.
Deaglán de Bréadún is Foreign Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times