Posted on 06/22/2003 4:08:39 PM PDT by Chi-townChief
A quagmire is defined as marshy or boggy land where the footing is insecure.
Or, as the dictionary says, "a situation from which extrication is very difficult."
In any case, it is the word that no one wants to think about when it comes to the war in Iraq.
It is seven weeks since President Bush declared that major hostilities in Iraq were over.
Since then, however, more than 40 American troops have been killed in accidents or after being attacked by unfriendly forces, many of whom are believed to be loyal to Saddam Hussein.
For the past couple of weeks, our troops have come under attack on an almost daily basis. They are primarily being attacked by small arms fire and by rocket propelled grenades. Today (Thursday), I heard about a mortar attack on one of our installations.
This week, one of the slain soldiers was a native of our south suburban area.
Meanwhile, there are still no weapons of mass destruction. As of this writing, none of the tons of chemical or biological weapons that we heard about before the war — that, indeed, were the stated reason for the war — have been found. No evidence has been found of a program to develop a nuclear bomb in Iraq.
What we have found are mass graves, along with other evidence that Saddam Hussein and his henchmen are very, very bad people. To supporters of the war, the weapons of mass destruction are now of secondary importance; we are told that those graves provide all the justification that was needed to spend billions of dollars and put tens of thousands of our young people at risk.
Like millions of other loyal Americans, I did not want this war; once it started, I wanted it over as quickly as possible. Since I love this country and want it to do the right thing, I wanted the war in Iraq to actually accomplish something. On the day after the war began, I wrote of our leaders that "I sure hope they know what they're doing."
I am still not sure.
It appears that the chaos following Saddam's fall — especially widespread looting and other lawlessness — was much worse than anyone expected.
Fundamentalist Islamic groups seem ready to make their bid for power in the post-Saddam Iraq.
The war has sparked anti-Americanism throughout the Muslim world, even in countries where relations have been generally good in the past. Some of the fighters who are throwing themselves at American troops appear to be from Arab countries outside Iraq.
There is no doubt that the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam Hussein. We can only hope that they will ultimately get a chance to choose their own government, even though it is anyone's guess what that government will look like. Until that happens, we will have hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq, probably for years to come.
In the end, we are left with the question of whether our own country is any safer after the fall of Saddam Hussein. For months before the war, we were told that Saddam's weapons, especially in the hands of terrorists, posed an imminent threat to Americans. If there are no weapons, are we safer? Or are the terrorist dangers we face merely the same as they were before the war?
It would be easy to make wisecracks about the missing weapons, about the looting and other chaos in Iraq.
The fact is, though, that events in Iraq are getting harder to watch with every passing day. I don't know if it is a quagmire. But it certainly has elements of a tragedy.
And the tragedy struck close to home this week.
Pvt. Shawn Pahnke, who grew up in the Will County community of Manhattan, was shot and killed by a sniper in Baghdad Monday as he rode in the back of a Humvee. He was 25 and leaves behind a wife and a 3-month-old son, whom he had never met.
During the Iraq war, other soldiers have died from the Chicago area and from Northwest Indiana. But Pahnke is the first to die from this newspaper's circulation area.
Pahnke entered Army basic training late last fall, shortly after getting married. He was in a tank unit and was stationed in Germany before being deployed to Iraq in early May.
"He was such a good boy, extremely proud of what he was doing ," his father, Tom Pahnke, told The Star Wednesday. "He was very, very happy to be a soldier."
Tom Pahnke, the Manhattan village administrator, said his son will be buried at Abraham Lincoln Veterans Cemetery in Elwood.
"That way, I can be buried next to him," said Shawn Pahnke's father, who himself is a Vietnam veteran.
As Manhattan mourns the loss of one of its sons, all of us should keep the Pahnke family in our thoughts and prayers.
At times like this, we have to know that young people, in war, die for a reason.
The initial reason for the war — the weapons of mass destruction — appears to have disappeared like a puff of smoke. (Whether the weapons ever existed, of course, is another question that will have to be addressed.)
Now the reasons for the war seem to be in a state of flux. We seem to be following the vague command that we have no choice except to "get it right" in Iraq. That is an enterprise that will continue to cost much of our national treasure and, I fear, more of our young people's blood.
If we don't get it right, we may be left with the distinct feeling that our feet are getting stuck in a bog that's a lot bigger than anyone ever imagined.
Tom Houlihan may be reached at (708) 802-8820. Or you may send e-mail to thoulihan@starnewspapers.com.
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