The Atlanta Journal and Constitution April 09, 2003
Victory may be difficult to define;
'Regime change' alone may not halt conflict
By SHELLEY EMLING
New York --- U.S. soldiers have rolled into Iraq's isolated capital, blown up a statue of Saddam Hussein and explored the leader's opulent presidential palaces, even checking out his gold-plated toilet brushes.
If that's not victory, then what is?
In 1991, victory in the Persian Gulf War was easy to specify --- the liberation of Kuwait. After 40 days of airstrikes, Iraqi forces fled and a handful of Iraqi generals signed an agreement.
But as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted Monday, the declaration of victory this time around "is a tough question."
From a military point of view, Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing, victory might be declared when the regime has been changed and "coalition forces have the ability to move around the country in relative safety."
"Regime change" already may have taken place if Saddam and his sons were indeed killed in a U.S. air raid Monday.
However, spasms of guerrilla warfare against U.S.-led troops probably will continue long after real combat has ceased, said Patrick Garrett, an analyst with the military research group GlobalSecurity.org.
"I think it will be hard to tell when the war is over, especially if elements in Saddam's military decide not to give up the fight, even if Saddam's at the bottom of a rubble pile somewhere," he said.
Garrett said Iraq could wind up looking a lot like Afghanistan, where troops still face skirmishes nearly a year and a half after the war in that country began.
"A lot of people think the war is over in Afghanistan and that nothing much is going on, but military operations occur every day, and the military is still inflicting casualties and suffering casualties there," he said. "We could see some low-intensity fighting for some time."
A U.S. Central Command spokesman, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, said victory for the Iraqi people already is occurring in some areas, as they are being freed from dictatorship.
"At no time have we said there is a hunt for any particular individual," he said Monday. "We continue to focus not on any individuals but the regime."
Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon briefing Tuesday, "I think the end of the game is the end of the regime, and that's much closer than people thought it was."
In the end, perhaps the simplest answer to when victory will be achieved was one given recently by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer: "Victory is when the president announces it."
Copyright © 2003, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
