Brutality in Iraq shows need to react and to adjust

The United States must respond to the atrocities in Fallujah, but must do so within the bounds of a civilized society. The mob that tortured and killed four American security guards then desecrated their bodies must be brought to justice.
Many of the 300 or so men and boys are identifiable from videotapes. Fallujah is not a large city, as cities go, and there are ways of finding the killers and desecrators. That is a job for the U.S. military and the Iraqi police force -- neither of which responded in a timely fashion when the security convoy was attacked.
As of today, the images the people of Iraq and the rest of the world have seen are those of smiling savages dragging burned bodies through the streets and stringing them up from a bridge. Those images should be replaced in coming days with photographs of those same young men being dragged from their homes toward Iraqi jails, where they can rot for years.
But pursuing some level of justice for attacks that were so savage that they offended even Iraqis who are violently opposed to American occupation of the country is only a small part of the necessary response.
The attacks in Fallujah, the publicity they received worldwide and the depth of insurgency that they expose have further complicated the already complicated job of reconstructing Iraq.
The attacks redefine the nature of the conflict in Iraq and call for changes in the way the United States and its allies are going about the democratization of the nation.
Inevitable occupation
Now, more than ever, the need for the occupying army in Iraq to be a United Nations force is apparent. Even those Iraqis who were happy to see Saddam fall are not supportive of a long-term occupation, but some sort of occupation will be necessary for years.
The hand-over of power to a provisional Iraqi government in June is largely symbolic. No nation can make the transition from decades of brutal dictatorship to liberated nation to self-sufficient democracy in a year or so.
But as of today, the United States and its military and civilian personnel are the focal point for hostility from Shiites, Sunnis, Baathists and uncounted other subcultures. A United Nations force -- especially one that includes personnel from other Arab and Muslim nations -- would be seen as less of a threat -- and less of a target.
The United States can't abandon Iraq, at least not in the immediate future. But neither can it and a select few Western nations rebuild it on their own.
Whatever its goals may have been, the United States was wrong to have gone into Iraq when it did. It should have continued to work with the United Nations to neutralize Saddam. But that decision will be sorted out by the politics of the years to come and the history that will be written in the decades to come.
What's necessary now is a better plan for eventually restoring order to Iraq. And President Bush and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan should be talking about that today, tomorrow and every day until they arrive at a workable plan.