The Ming Report

VICTORY?

As one by one the symbols of Saddam Hussein’s all persuasive authority are toppled it is tempting to wax euphoric at what appears to be the latest triumph of American and British arms. But that euphoria is tempered somewhat by the split screen images of a statue coming down west of the Tigris and the eruption of a vicious ambush attack upon a marine column east of the same river. It was a disquieting conjuncture of scenes of exuberant victory and popular uprising with scenes of continuing combat; a sobering reminder that the battle is not yet over and the last casualties of the Iraqi campaign have not yet been counted.

Secretary Rumsfeld, General Myers and Ari Fleischer have been careful to warn the reporters at their briefings that the war was not over, that hard and dangerous work remained to be done. But even as they spoke the breathless anchor of Fox News was proclaiming April 9th as VI day. General Myers displayed a chart showing the areas of Allied control in green and those not yet conquered in gray. A large swatch of gray extended northwest from Baghdad to the Syrian border. The Baathist escape route is still intact.

Even as the jubilation at the fall of the Regime in Baghdad was beamed around the world the news of a resurgent Taliban was reaching the West. Chicago Tribune reporter Kim Barker writes of raids by armed gangs on schools near Kabul and Kandahar. The article described in detail the attack upon a boy’s school in the village of Sheik Mohammadi near Kandahar, terrorizing the teachers, destroying their books with the result that many of the students feared to return to school. Last week two more American soldiers were killed in combat and today General Myers apologized for the mistaken bombing of an Afghan family’s home in the continuing combat in Southeast Afghanistan. That campaign is not yet completed. The Great Game that bled the British, the Russians and the Soviets before us is not yet over.

The military accomplishments of the last three weeks have been a demonstration of the superiority of Anglo-American training, equipment and technology arrayed against a third rate armed force supplied with obsolescent equipment. A people whose memories include the experience of World War II and the meat grinder of Vietnam cannot help but feel astounded at the seeming ease of the battle thus far. Yet the success of arms does not vindicate the policies that initiated the conflict in the first place. The blood of combat can only be redeemed by what follows the cession of hostilities. Only if the totalitarian regime is replaced by a responsible and stable government responsive to the needs of its people and at peace with its neighbors can it be said that the battle ended in victory. That result has not been accomplished in Afghanistan. Whether it can be achieved in Iraq remains an imponderable.