THERE IS AN IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE between war and battle. War is large, governed by politics. Very few people experience war, even very few people in uniform. Battle can be large or small, but is almost always chaotic. Battle is what most soldiers know; Clausewitz called it “the engagement.”
Battle is also what most in the media know, whether they are “veteran” war correspondents like Peter Arnett or Peter Jennings or big-hair anchors just promoted from doing the local weather. This has never been true more than in the current war, with its “shock and awe” images of Saddam’s Baghdad palaces and headquarters or the genuinely awful images of U.S. prisoners of war and casualties. Compelling images of battle often make it hard to see the war.
Thus, a day when spearheads of the 3rd Infantry Division moved to within 60 miles of Baghdad–after having marched 250 miles in two and a half days–and the field forces of the Republican Guard had begun to take a pounding from coalition airpower was spun as a bad day for the good guys. The possibility that the regime might collapse after the initial decapitation strike has had an intoxicating effect on the media, particularly the television channels with more air time than good sense. Thus, NPR’s Tom Gjelten opined on PBS’ “Washington Week in Review” last Friday that, “if the war were still going on a week from now, that will be a bad sign.”
Let’s remember: this is regime change. That means destroying, either on the battlefield or by other means, the full instruments of Saddam’s terror. These instruments–the Baath party, its army, its security services, its corrupt bureaucracy–have survived for more than two decades despite devastating losses against the United States and the Desert Storm coalition, against Iran, against many uprisings, and even internal coups by Iraqis. The Saddam-state has held onto power even after losing control of a third of the country. The regime may have been decapitated, but its remaining body parts are still twitching, violently.
The regime does not have long to live. Militarily, two steps remain. The first, already underway from the air, is to destroy the Republican Guard heavy units that are the outer ring of defenses around Baghdad. Over the next day or three, the Medina, Nebuchadnezzar, and Al Nida divisions (remember also that an Iraqi division, even in the best of times, fields but a fraction of the combat power of a U.S. division) will be dismembered from the air and then swept aside on the ground.
The second and final step will then be to crush the regime’s nucleus in Baghdad–and also perhaps in Tikrit. The remaining leadership may implode under the pressure, but Saddam’s loyalists have nothing left to lose and more to fear from their fellow Iraqis than from America, Great Britain, or our allies. And as they die in their bunkers, they may commit any number of atrocities on whomever they can: American soldiers, American POWs, Iraqi innocents.
But even if the outcome is inevitable, there is no need to rush it. The number of nightmare scenarios has been shrinking since the beginning of the campaign. The need for speed is not what it was a few days ago, and is giving way to the need for caution, judgment and that curious combination of cold-bloodedness and mercy that characterizes the best leadership of free nations in war and in victory.
Tom Donnelly is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
