Tampa Tribune (Florida) April 09, 2003
Definition Of Victory Isn't Simple
Baghdad's Fall Won't Signal End Of The Fight
By Keith Epstein
WASHINGTON - When the seemingly triumphant Gen. Tommy Franks ventured into the battle zone for the first time - thumping soldiers' chests and bear-hugging as if he were the coach of his favored Buccaneers and they just won the Super Bowl - he avoided Baghdad.
Even in supposedly secure slices of southern Iraq, the war's top commander tucked a Beretta 9 mm pistol in his belt. A chemical weapons suit was ready. So was his MH-53 helicopter with a protective Kevlar mat to ward against ground fire, and machine gunners positioned at both doors.
The cautious seven-hour tour by Franks on Monday was a clear sign not only of the nearing climax of a two-week war amid stunningly fast-paced successes, but also a sign that the peaceful "liberation" of Iraq is far from complete and could elude the United States for months.
After his first foray beyond the security of U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar, Franks acknowledged: "The hardest part of all this may, in fact, be in front of us, not behind us."
When will the United States know it has won the war?
"I don't think we will, at least not for a long time," said retired Brig. Gen. Jack Gary, a Marine who retired from Central Command in 1986.
"Capturing Baghdad is not enough. We may think we've won, and all of a sudden realize we haven't. Control of the country is an obtainable goal, but total control and destruction of any resistance that lingers is a difficult goal. I just don't know how to establish we've won."
For all appearances, victory seems near: Iraq's largest city, its center of military and political gravity, is cut off and overrun. A dictator and his sons may have been detonated to bunker-busted oblivion.
Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons czar, Ali Hassan al-Majid, or "Chemical Ali," is dead. Many, if not all, Iraqis have been rejoicing with cries of liberation, bags of food and bottles of water.
Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of an exile group, has been shipped into southern Iraq and handed enough light weapons by the U.S. Marines to lead a self-styled "1st Battalion of Free Iraqi Forces" to fight the last of Saddam's soldiers.
Reconstruction teams are in place under the leadership of Jay Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general from Orlando. On Tuesday, they opened their first bureau of the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid in Umm Qasr.
President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, meanwhile, discussing formation of a new government, talk of spreading peace to other geopolitical hot spots in the Middle East and to seemingly intractable problems such as Northern Ireland.
When Bush urges, as he did Tuesday in Belfast, that feuding Catholics and Protestants accept a new "blueprint for peace," it's easy to imagine the Iraqi conflict near culmination.
How To Know War Is Done
But will it be over when it's over?
"The real fear everybody has is that the U.S. will declare victory, but there will be a low-intensity conflict for the next six months," said Patrick Garrett, a GlobalSecurity.org defense analyst. "When we'll know is when the fighting stops. But if that's the case, even [the war in] Afghanistan isn't over."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, too, says a declaration of victory will come "later rather than sooner" in Iraq. U.S. forces expect to run into sporadic, occasionally intense resistance for weeks, if not months, before 125,000 of them can shift to a new phase aimed at helping run, rebuild and secure a nation the size of California.
Uprisings, ambushes and other attacks are likely to cause more than a few complications for efforts aimed at establishing dependable layers of security for troops, everyday safety for Iraqi citizens and reliable flows of food, medicine, water and other goods throughout Iraq. Last-ditch attacks of desperation also are possible.
Few military analysts inside and outside the Pentagon expect a quick or clear victory with a conclusive defining moment, such as the headlines and parades of V-E or V-J day, when Americans took to the streets in celebration of the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese in World War II.
A formal surrender would help, analysts say, but they also need to make a convincing case that the fighting has ended, that key leaders have been annihilated, that the infrastructure and services of major cities remain intact and functioning, that feuding factions can get along, that enemies cannot regroup, and that terrorists cannot obtain weapons or other assistance from within Iraq.
It's not only a long list, it's a difficult one, experts say.
Declaring an end to combat, Rumsfeld said Monday, "without having really done a good deal of work around the country, it seems to me, would be inappropriate."
U.S.-led forces clearly have not achieved the key ambitions of the invasion of Iraq: the toppling of Saddam's regime and seizure of chemical and biological weapons, prime justifications for stepping into war in the first place.
While Saddam and a deep-lying bunker were again targeted Monday, perhaps successfully, whether the leader lives and whether his sons survived still seems to be anyone's guess.
"I don't know whether he survived," Bush acknowledged in Belfast. "The only thing I know is he's losing power."
As for chemical weapons, murky evidence for which the United Nations declined to give support for the U.S. invasion, the results turned up so far remain debatable, at best.
Chemicals have been seized and identified, but none have been "weaponized," that is modified or installed on a missile to distribute them.
The metal drums uncovered by U.S. forces and embedded reporters in recent days might just as likely have been used to grow crops as for building banned weapons of mass destruction.
"This could be either some type of pesticide," Gen. Benjamin Freakly, commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, told CNN. "On the other hand, it could be a chemical agent, not weaponized."
Cultural Differences May Be Difficult
Major cities lie in American hands, or at least fingers. But it takes more. Napoleon overran Moscow but lost the war. The situation in Iraq, Gary said, "could end up more like Northern Ireland or the Middle East."
Meanwhile, even when combat along clear lines ceases and general stability reigns, the United States faces the daunting task of occupying and managing a large country despite limited awareness of a different culture.
"The potential for serious misunderstanding and subsequent tragedy is exponentially magnified," said Lt. Col. Dale Davis, a former Marine specialist in the Middle East who teaches at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va.
"A 19-year-old Marine from southwest Virginia may be a fearless warrior, but is sorely unequipped to walk a beat in Nasiriyah or Basra."
Bush, insisting that an interim government would remain in place no longer than necessary, said Tuesday that "the Iraqis are plenty capable of running Iraq."
But this oversimplifies a real quandary that may bedevil American occupiers: how to discern Iraqis capable of overseeing and engineering new services for water and police from Iraqis who may have the abilities but too much "taint" from association with Saddam's regime.
On the other hand, eliminating too many Iraqi bureaucrats and other workers from the most basic jobs of running the country because of their association with the Baath party could force too much of the work on the occupying forces, feeding accusations the United States is engaged in neocolonialism rather than liberation.
And that, in turn, could stand in the way of achieving the Bush administration's broader goals in the Middle East, including a peaceful solution for Israel and the Palestinians.
"Faced with the growing number of political challenges of governance, coalition generals will soon wax nostalgic about the simplicity of liberating Iraq," Davis predicted.
(CHART) HOW THEY ENDED
World War I
Ended: Nov. 11, 1918, by armistice
Aftermath: The harsh conditions of the final Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, sent Germany into an extended period of economic decline and might have contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
World War II
Ended: Sept. 2, 1945, by surrender.
Aftermath: The $13 billion Marshall Plan for reconstruction and economic recovery in Western Europe began 21/2 years later, in April 1948. Japan's economic recovery was swift, with industrial production returning to prewar levels by the mid-1950s.
Korean War
Ended: July 27, 1953, by armistice.
Aftermath: South Korea, which had little industrial development, required billions of dollars in U.S. aid after the war. A formal peace treaty has never been signed, but a pact was signed in 1991 calling for North Korea and South Korea to put a formal end to the war.
Vietnam War
Ended: Jan. 28, 1973, when a cease-fire ended U.S. involvement.
Aftermath: The peace agreement was short-lived. North Vietnamese forces mounted a major offensive against the South in March 1975 and South Vietnam surrendered in April 1975. The last U.S. troops left Vietnam in March 1973.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO 5 (C) CHART
The Associated Press
(C) Gen. Tommy Franks, left, made his first appearance in Iraq on Monday to greet soldiers in Najaf.
(Front page of The Tampa City Times, day WWI ended)
(End of WW II, signing the surrender)
(Signing the armistice agreement)
(Cease fire, Vietnam)
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