Suddenly, things are going wrong for the coalition in Iraq: it is not just the body bags being flown to London and Washington; it is the decided sense of unease that is beginning to grow in both capitals.
The entire debate about the misuse and exaggeration of intelligence reports to justify the war has taken on a sharper edge. The idea that soldiers are being killed in an unnecessary conflict is giving the opposition in Britain and the US ammunition to use against two leaders who, barely a couple of months ago, seemed unassailable. While Blair is coming in for unprecedented attacks from his own party, Bush is no longer invulnerable: the latest polls show a definite slide in his popularity rating. And as America prepares for its seemingly interminable run-up to the next election, this cannot be good news for Bush's re-election campaign.
Occupying powers tend to demonize local forces resisting their designs by calling them 'terrorists'. Thus, Kashmiris, Palestinians and Chechens have all been dubbed terrorists by the states fighting to suppress them. West Pakistani forces trying to crush the Mukti Bahini in East Pakistan called them 'miscreants'. We can now add the Iraqis ambushing American troops every day to this list. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Baghdad, refers to them as 'pro-Saddam, Ba'ath forces'. He has also spoken of American determination "to impose its will on Iraq".
Under international law, Iraqis have the legitimate right to resist the occupation they have been subjected to. When Bush declared that the war in Iraq was over on May 1, he was not speaking for the Iraqi people. No responsible Iraqi leader has signed an instrument of surrender ending hostilities.
War was imposed on Iraq by the Americans and the British, and the country is now under occupation unauthorized by the United Nations. Under the Geneva Conventions, the occupation forces have the responsibility to provide law and order, and any Iraqis detained by them have to be treated in accordance with the rules of law.
A retired American general interviewed by BBC was of the opinion that his country would have to continue its occupation of Iraq for another ten years if it wanted to meet its declared war aims of "bringing democracy to Iraq". Just restoring basic services in the country now seems like a Herculean task with regular attacks on gas and oil pipelines.
Since May 1, when Bush declared the war had been won, the Americans have been losing an average of one dead soldier a day with many more wounded. Half these casualties have been as a result of hostile action. Do the Americans have the stomach for an open-ended struggle even at this low level?
Most nations are willing to accept losses as the necessary cost of defending themselves, but are reluctant to do so when the fighting is in a remote part of the world for an obscure cause. As long as the majority of American and British people were convinced that they were under threat from Iraq's so-called weapons of mass destruction, they were willing to back the war. But now that these famous WMDs are proving to be a mirage in the desert and the supposed threat invented by their leaders to gain their support seems to be non-existent, they are unlikely to accept further casualties. In addition, they are likely to punish those politicians who lied to them and led them into an unnecessary war.
Although elections in Britain are not due for another couple of years, Blair is already feeling the pain. Every day, the newspapers are full of the famous 'dodgy dossier' containing a recycled, unattributed 12-year old Ph.D. thesis.
Alistair Campbell, Blair's director of communications, is daily accused of 'sexing up' intelligence reports to sell the war to the British people and Parliament. Currently, two parliamentary committees are probing into the possible misuse of qualified information about Iraqi WMDs supplied by MI6.
But it is in America where the effects of war and occupation are likely to be significant in the long term. The American people, never having suffered from war on their soil after the Civil War, have long unconsciously felt security to be their birthright. When they were attacked on September 11, for them all the rules changed overnight.
The neo-conservatives close to Bush declared pre-emption to be the new strategy to ensure that America would never again be attacked. Any perceived threat would have to be dealt with before it could actually damage American interests.
Although American planes and missiles were raining death on Afghanistan barely five weeks after 9/11, this was not a satisfactory response to the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. A more substantial target than a bunch of ragtag Taliban had to be found, and despite the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, a decision to target it was taken in the summer of 2002, and it remained only to sell the war to the American people.
In the event, this was not a difficult task, given the trust most Americans repose in their government. But now that it is becoming increasingly evident that Saddam Hussein posed a threat only to his own people, and American troops are dying every day, it is a whole different ball game.
Pre-emption is a difficult strategy to implement in an increasingly hostile world, specially when other countries are reluctant to share the burden of implementing it. Although America's military power is unprecedented, it cannot impose its will on the whole world. Already there are signs of imperial overstretch. As Syria and Iran are threatened and North Korea continues its open defiance, Washington is all too aware that its resources are stretched thin on the ground. It has around 150,000 troops in Iraq alone and cannot withdraw any of them in the current hostile environment. It has troops in Afghanistan and a sizable military presence in South Korea. None of these three countries it views as potentially hostile is likely to be as easy to attack as Iraq proved after a decade of sanctions.
For years, America has been spending more than it has earned, and this deficit is being underwritten by the sale of bonds bought by foreigners and its own citizens. As long as its economy was doing well, there was no shortage of buyers for these treasury bonds, but now, with the dollar sliding and the figures for the economy positively discouraging, there is growing disquiet about the long-term future. How to finance heavier military commitments abroad is going to be an increasingly difficult problem for the administration. And with repeated attacks on pipelines in Iraq, there is concern about paying for the occupation and reconstruction activities.
As long-dead empires found out long ago, the cost of imperial ambitions can be crippling.