"The explosion of looting in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities at the end of last week ... vividly demonstrated a truth that the Bush administration has been slow to accept: that the United States cannot manage postwar Iraq on its own," read an editorial in The Washington Post.

"US commanders should focus in the coming days on restoring order to Iraqi cities and ensuring the delivery of humanitarian supplies. President Bush could meanwhile consult the United Nations and other nations about postwar arrangements and offer a role to those prepared to cooperate," it went on.

"Good diplomacy in the coming weeks could relieve the United States of many risks and burdens it will otherwise have to bear in Iraq."

The New York Times warned Bush against any impulse to resort to force on other countries deemed threatening to the United States.

"He should not confuse the military achievement for a validation of his doctrine of pre-emptive strikes," the paper's editorial board wrote.

"We did not like the combative doctrine when it was formally unveiled last September because it seemed to walk away from America's historical inclination to work with other nations to preserve the peace and to rely on force only when its security was directly threatened," the Times said.

"For many people and nations, the way the Bush administration went after Saddam Hussein confirmed fears raised by the doctrine ... that is one reason why the move to war drew so much opposition around the world," it said.

"A doctrine that purports to spread happiness, but ends up spreading resentment, is not working, no matter how many statues come tumbling down," the Times went on.

"That is why it is especially important now to show that the United States also has the confidence and wisdom to sheathe its sword until it is really

needed."

The Los Angeles Times lamented the Bush administration's "far more heavy reliance on for-profit companies than on the sorts of non-profit non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, that the United States has historically counted on to reconstruct ravaged societies."

Pointing to lessons to be gleaned from the US intervention in Afghanistan, now in a degree of post-war turmoil, it wrote: "Afghanistan is now, in many places, back to its old, messy, pre-Taliban, pre-Soviet self, with rival warlords governing most of the country."

The editorial went on to say that for-profit corporations and non-profit organizations "have certain things they do best."

In Iraq, it said, "Both should be invited to participate. Neither, however, will succeed unless the United States (and, preferably, a coalition of other nations) provides the safety and economic stability in which they can do their very difficult jobs."

SPACE.WIRE