America’s behavior in Iraq over the past month “bears a close resemblance to the disaster of the Bay of Pigs, but unlike President Kennedy, no one is apologizing for this one.” So said former Defense Department official Paul Wolfowitz before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As in 1961, brave men prepared to risk their lives in common cause with the United States have been abandoned to a tyrant’s murderous pleasures. And, as in 1961, our friends and enemies around the world will draw very dangerous conclusions from the event.

Saddam Hussein’s Aug. 30-31 invasion of the American-guaranteed safe zone in northern Iraq was no surprise. All the interested parties — the American and British governments, the two Kurdish clans, and the only effective Iraqi opposition to Saddam, the Iraqi National Congress — had discussed it. The Americans in contact with the Kurds and Shiites had promised a speedy and forceful response to the invasion.