Walker's World: Why hit the U.N.?

The difference between the United Nations and the United States was cruelly defined Wednesday as the world body collected its dead from the Baghdad car bomb and began evacuating its staff from Iraq. No matter how many car bombs, how many snipings, how many rocket-propelled grenades and knives in the night, the men and women of the U.S. and British allied forces in that country have no such option to leave. Under national military discipline, they stay — and take the consequences and the casualties. This is not to denigrate the courage of the U.N. staff who volunteered for what has become a murderous mission to Baghdad. The questions are why this has happened? Who was to blame? And what was their motive? The United Nations is now a target, and in that sense a co-belligerent, and it is important to understand why. There are three main sources of inspiration for what we had better start calling Phase 2 of the Iraq conflict — the guerilla war. The first, obviously, is the remaining forces of the old, discredited regime of Saddam Hussein, his loyalists and security squads — who tend not to be likely candidates for suicide bombing missions. The second is the swelling band of Islamic fundamentalists and anti-American Arab nationalists who are flocking to Iraq to join the war against the Great Satan, and for whom the suicide mission has become an accepted tactic. Full Story