April 9, 2003 [LINK]
Victory in Baghdad: What it means
The daring, unexpected push into the heart of Baghdad by U.S. troops has once again confounded the "conventional wisdom" of pundits. Rather than pausing to replenish their supplies, as is standard practice, U.S. commanders chose to keep up the momentum from their recent victories. This was a calculated risk that paid off big time. The urban blitzkrieg caught Saddam Hussein's loyalists off guard, thus averting the bloody street fighting that many people feared. I had speculated about such a sudden grab of downtown turf on March 27 (albeit with helicopter-borne troops rather than tanks), but I didn't think U.S. commanders would actually try something so bold. My apologies to the U.S. Army! Now the people of Baghdad are dancing in the streets, exhilarated and perhaps intoxicated by the sweet air of liberty, which very few of them had ever known.
The liberation of Iraq's capital city comes three weeks after the outbreak of war, exactly the length of time that I had estimated the entire campaign would take on March 21. (Coalition casualties thus far have been much lower than I was expecting, thank goodness.) The Battle of Baghdad does not signify the end of this war, however. Some military resistance is likely to continue north of Baghdad -- around the town of Tikrit, the home town of Saddam and most of his henchmen, and around the oil-producing cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, toward which U.S.-led Kurdish rebels have been advancing. The situation in the north is very volatile, and there is still a risk that Turkey might intervene militarily to prevent the creation of an independent Kurdistan. Nasty surprises from Saddam's loyal thugs may yet await us, but American commanders have learned the lessons of Beirut in 1982 and Mogadishu in 1993, and our troops are presumably vigilant about possible terrorist attacks and ambushes.
The sudden triumph poses an interesting question for military analysts: What about the 4th Infantry Division and other reinforcements that are currently assembling in Kuwait? Those units were originally planning to invade Iraq from the north, but after Turkey rebuffed Colin Powell last month, the ships carrying their heavy equipment had to be diverted from the Mediterranean Sea to Kuwait, via the Suez Canal. One is tempted to wonder whether all that anguish might have been part of a ruse intended to make the Iraqis think that there would be no attack on Baghdad until at least mid-April, to get them to let down their guard. No doubt those reinforcements will still be needed to mop up die-hard resistance and to police the streets during the chaotic "interregnum" between the old despotic regime and the future democratic regime.
Beyond that, having a strong American force on hand in the Middle East for the next few months may also serve as un unsubtle hint to recalcitrant rogue regimes that they had better stop tolerating terrorists within their borders. As President Bush has said, the liberation of Iraq is by no means the final chapter of the long-term war against "terrorism," i.e., Arab-Islamic fascism. (As Middle East expert Bernard Lewis recently wrote in the National Post, the brutal regime of Saddam has no real roots in the local culture, but was in effect "imported" from the West. The Baath Party was founded during the early 1940s when fascism was on the rise. Lewis sees this as a "perverted" form of modernization.) No one is expecting U.S. forces to liberate Syria or Iran, of course, but televised images of grateful Iraqi people being freed from tyrrany by friendly GI's and Marines will undoubtedly have an enormous "demonstration effect" on those countries and others in the region. Authoritarian governments in the Middle East will gradually find that the old, reliable habit of instilling hatred for the United States in their people as a means of maintaining political control just doesn't work the way it used to.
As Donald Rumsfeld said, today marks a pivotal moment in history rivaling the fall of the Berlin Wall. Just as in 1989, the radical change in concrete politial circumstances will give rise to a corresponding radical change in the world psychological climate. Nevertheless, this is not the happily-ever-after "end of history," so it behooves us to recall the political objectives toward which the military action was aimed. (As Karl von Clausewitz said, war is the conduct of politics with other means.) Of course, flushing out terror cells and weapons of mass destruction are worthy goals in themselves, as is the liberation of 23 million Iraqi people. Beyond those, however, comes the more nebulous but ultimately far more important goal of de-legitimizing terrorism. Until now, Arab nationalists in Palestine, etc., and Muslim extremists in many countries have flaunted with impunity their terrorist "weapon" while many people in the Western world cowered and made excuses for them. No more. Thanks to the decisive, courageous leadership of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, the will of the United States and Great Britain to resist intimidation and to prevail over barbaric terrorists is manifest to all. Arab-Islamic fascism is not dead yet, and years will pass before we can start to feel truly safe again, but the ultimate goal of a world of expanding freedom is now in sight.
FOOTNOTE: The B-1 bomber that dropped the JDAM smart bombs on the "leadership target" (Saddam?) two nights ago is part of the 34th Bomb Squadron that is normally based at Ellsworth Air Force Base, near Rapid City, SOUTH DAKOTA.