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Already the Saddam government is daily escorting foreign journalists to bombed-out homes, schools and the like, scenes that are running almost nightly on American TV. The allies insist they are going out of their way to avoid civilian targets, and the record bears them out. Baghdad's own figures on civilian casualties, while hopelessly confusing, are remarkably low, given the length and intensity of the bombing. But there is no way to entirely avoid the killing of civilians, and Saddam seems to be trying to provoke more by putting military installations among them -- placing antiaircraft guns on top of apartment houses, for example. Thus a dismal equation: more bombing equals more civilian deaths equals an ever greater chance for Saddam to portray the war as an assault by Western colonialists and Zionists against the entire Arab world.
Optimists insist that Arab governments that are members of the alliance -- predominantly Saudi Arabia and Syria -- can maintain control, despite the surge of pro-Saddam feeling. Congressman Aspin concedes the growing strength of that sentiment. But he asserts that "those who might fall out of the coalition, either because of the impact on their public of the damage being inflicted on Iraq by the air campaign or because they want to pursue a diplomatic solution that falls short of our war aims, are not vital to the military campaign." Maybe, but some of the staunchest U.S. allies do not want to take any chances. "We quite frankly underestimated the support for Saddam in the Arab street," says a Saudi minister. "If we don't move to cut that off as quickly as we can, the postwar peace will be harder to fashion than even the most pessimistic among us have thought."
British diplomats say Bush has written to Arab members of the coalition, pledging not to delay the ground war beyond this month. White House officials strongly deny that, but they readily admit that several Arab coalition partners are pressing the President to begin the land offensive within the next few weeks to bring the war to a relatively speedy end. Thus one central question in the decision could be bluntly phrased this way: How many American and allied soldiers' lives is it worth to cut off pro-Saddam sentiment among the Arab masses before it burgeons enough to threaten both the war effort and the eventual peace?
In an airborne briefing en route to Saudi Arabia, however, Powell cautioned against the idea that the "ground campaign, as the night follows the day, means huge casualties." Saddam may be planning a Verdun in the sand, but ! allied commanders insist they are not going to oblige him by relying primarily on frontal attacks on the impressive Iraqi fortifications. The campaign instead is likely to combine a flanking maneuver around the lines in Kuwait, with paratroop drops and amphibious landings behind those lines.