The collapse of Saddam Hussein’s sordid regime is essentially complete. Scattered firefights will endure, especially in northern Iraq, for days or weeks to come. But the fall of a dictator both ruthless and menacing is as much a fact as the rupture of the wall in Berlin, or the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The temptation now is to look only forward, to the reconstruction of a free Iraq. Since the outcome of this brief conflict became obvious, one cliche of the pundit class has been that it would be easier to win the war than to win the peace.
That glib little bromide is dismissive and dangerous. Dismissive because it minimizes the valor and astonishingly swift success of those who have sacrificed their safety–and in some cases their lives–in warfare half a world away. Dangerous because, before we forget whether Karbala is east or west of Kut, we need to learn more from this war than the fact that it’s close to over.
Yes, still more deadly surprises no doubt await. And while Wednesday’s mood was triumphal as Marines lounged about the streets of Baghdad, we’re already hearing downbeat accounts that food, water and health care are slow in reaching some Iraqis. The harder slogs of birthing a new government, moving Arab opinion and reuniting with Europe all loom ahead.
That said, this war has rebuked some cocksure thinking and taught lessons we ought not forget:
– The Vietnam War has no further utility as a benchmark for U.S. conflicts. For Americans of a certain age, visions of quagmires erupt all too reflexively. The real message from Southeast Asia wasn’t that wars are always unworthy, but rather that they must be carefully reasoned and not fought in half-measures. The Iraq war met those criteria. In short, we are smarter when we distrust the familiar–and reject envisioning each new conflict through prisms pointed at the past.
– Predictions also merit distrust. This war has been awash in dire predictions that didn’t materialize. The waves of refugees that would block advancing troops? U.S. soldiers solved that by leapfrogging past many cities, leaving civil order undisturbed. The lack of a northern front because Turkey wouldn’t let Americans launch an attack from its turf? Instead the Americans came north and encircled Baghdad. The inadequate number of U.S. fighters to attack Iraq’s “ring of steel” around the capital? Overwhelming air power forever eliminated the phrase “elite Republican Guard divisions” from the lexicon of war. The list of failed predictions goes on and on, as happened in Afghanistan. One reason: No media pundit or retired military analyst ever got fired for dishing up too much gloomy peril.
– This has been a terrible war for those who like their diplomacy delicate. Yes, the U.S. and British refusal to let 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions against Iraq go unanswered fueled anger in Europe and in the Arab street. Now the leaders of France, Germany and Russia are eagerly looking for ways to make nice, and the Arab street has not, as some Middle East experts theorized, tried to overthrow any regimes.
– As wars go, this one has been a model of speed, adaptability–and restraint. The 1991 Persian Gulf war had a relatively easy mission: driving Iraqi troops from Kuwait’s desert to Iraq’s desert. This war involves seizing an entrenched capital full of civilians. Rapid assaults have given Iraqi fighters no time to mount defenses, and rear-guard attacks on allied supply lines have been shrewdly countered with assaults on such paramilitary strongholds as Nasiriya and Najaf. The rapid U.S. move on Baghdad, with tanks rolling at will through city streets, debunked fears that urban warfare would cost thousands of U.S. casualties. Avoidance of carpet-bombing and of intentional assaults against civilians have kept death and damage tolls relatively low: The war has killed civilians and crushed some of Iraq’s infrastructure, but by historical standards those losses have not been high. Put short: The Pentagon’s primary goal was demolition of the regime’s Baghdad base without the massive destruction of Iraq and its people. Mission accomplished–in three weeks.
– The most remarkable success stories of this war have yet to be told–but should forever dash the notion that wars are primarily fought along discernible fronts. Somehow, secretive U.S. special operations troops evidently prevented missile attacks on Israel, captured Iraqi airfields, kept Hussein’s loyalists from torching southern oil fields and petroleum plants, seized the Hadithah Dam to prevent the flooding of the Euphrates River valley, and cleared the way in northern Iraq for the biggest drop of paratroopers since World War II. This war has brought epiphanies to the phrase “behind enemy lines.”
– During the war’s first week, too many of us let our convictions distort our perceptions. Those who had supported war largely believed that early military successes proved them right; opponents who had prophesied doom found it in setbacks and sandstorms. Debating a war should never be confused with debating a war plan.
– The numerous media and military bloviators who predicted that U.S. resolve would wilt as casualty counts rose owe the American people an apology. Opinion polls suggest that footage of dead U.S. soldiers, frightened prisoners of war and sad hometown funerals have only stiffened spines. If a war’s mission is clear and victory is attainable, the American people don’t flinch. As Tocqueville wrote in the early 1800s, democracies are not easily provoked to make war–and not easily thwarted when provoked.
– So many proponents of this war have larded down its aftermath with so many tall expectations that the future cannot fulfill them all. But two improvements are certain: Saddam Hussein is history, and the people he cruelly subjugated are better off for that. In making its case for war on March 2, the Tribune argued that Hussein’s butchery and the world’s collective inaction had cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives. Only now, as they are free to speak, will we hear the wretched stories of those who survived.
The long-term measure of war is whether it provides peace. That is not, as some assert, the mere absence of fighting, but rather the deeper security that flows when a threat has been eliminated or a tyrant deposed. Peace will not come easily to a place as troubled as Iraq. But while this conflict is not over, its trajectory points to a fledgling semblance of peace–something the long mistreated people of Iraq richly deserve.
