How a War With Iraq Will Change the World

They made 16,000 of them the last time: Sacks that are about eight feet long and three feet across, with six handles and a zipper across the top. "Human Remains Pouches" is the horrible phrase the Pentagon uses for them, but everyone else knows them by the vernacular: body bags.

Remember the run-up to the first war with Iraq, Operation Desert Storm? The U.S. was headed to war, and for the first time since Vietnam we were going to take casualties, probably numerous.

Or so we thought. Three hundred and ninety American troops died in Gulf War I, a figure that is larger than what you may remember, but far, far smaller than what we had feared. Now, 11 years later, the U.S. military is fresh from subduing a band of fanatic tribal warriors in a country sprung straight from the Middle Ages, a conflict that was, on our side anyway, even more bloodless than Operation Desert Storm. This recent history of no-muss, no-fuss military success serves now as the critical backdrop to an atmosphere, both in Washington and across the country, that one eminence grise in the nation's capital reasonably describes as "surreal." We appear headed for round two with Saddam Hussein. And this time, as an HBO promo might have it, it's for keeps.

That prospect, even if it is probably a year away at best, is hugely serious business. No matter how smoothly (knock wood) any eventual military operation goes, a "regime change" in Iraq will have vast geopolitical and economic consequences. Some of them might be good, some not so good, and some of them could be horrible. But consequences there will be, for Iraq, for the region, and for the world. What is "surreal" is that for the most part, for now anyway, a lot of people in Washington talk about punching out Saddam the way they talk about, say, passing an education bill. Everyone's in favor, passage is a done deal, everyone will take credit, but please, spare us the details.