Snap Judgments
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/opinion/31SAFI.html
WASHINGTON
I never made it higher than corporal, but it doesn't
take a military genius to figure out the strategy when
you have air supremacy: break the back of the enemy's
armor and its infantry before your big ground assault.
A month's bombing worked in the last gulf war and a
couple of weeks should "degrade" the Iraqi Army again.
Here is a baker's dozen of my snap judgments about
this war:
1. Best gamble: jumping our guns a few days early in a
daring bid to win all at once. Our air strike to kill
Saddam and his gang may not have succeeded, but
failing to try on the basis of a sleeper spy's tip
would have been a great mistake.
2. Biggest diplomatic mistake: trusting the new
Islamist government of Turkey. This misplaced
confidence denied us an opening pincers movement and
shocked the awesomeness out of "rapid dominance."
3. Best evidence of Saddam's weakness: his reliance on
suicide bombers for media "victories." Individual
self-destruction may or may not terrorize a civilian
population but is not a weapon capable of inflicting
decisive casualties on, or striking fear into, a
powerful army. (It does vividly demonstrate the
Baghdad-terrorist nexus.)
4. Most stunning surprise: the degree of intimidation
of Shiites in southern cities by Saddam's son Uday's
Gestapo. When Basra falls, however, fierce retribution
on these thuggish enforcers by local Shia may send a
message of uprising to co-religionists who make up a
third of Baghdad's populace.
5. Most effective turnaround of longtime left-wing
lingo: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's labeling of Uday's
paramilitaries as "death squads."
6. Most profound statement from a military leader:
Gen. Tommy Franks, refuting criticism of a "pause" in
the ground war, said, "We have the power to be
patient."
7. Most overdue revelation by the Pentagon: that
Russia has long been smuggling sophisticated arms to
Saddam's regime with Syria's hostile connivance. Who
suppressed this damning data for a year, and to what
end? And is the C.I.A. still ignorant of the
transmission to Iraq through Syria of a key component
in rocket propellant from China, brokered by France?
8. Most inexplicable weakness of our intelligence and
air power: the inability to locate and obliterate all
of Saddam's TV propaganda facilities.
9. Biggest long-run victory of coalition forces to
date: the lightning seizure of southern oil fields
before Saddam had a chance to ignite them. This
underappreciated tactical triumph will speed Iraq's
postwar reconstruction by at least a year.
10. Worst mistake as a result of State and C.I.A.
interference with military planning: fearing to offend
the Turks, we failed to arm 70,000 free Kurdish pesh
merga in northern Iraq. Belatedly, we are giving Kurds
the air, commando and missile support to drive
Ansar-Qaeda terrorists out of a stronghold, but better
planning would have given us a trained, indigenous
force on the northern front.
11. Best military briefer: General Franks is less of a
showman than the last war's bombastic Norman
Schwarzkopf, but his low-key deputy, Lt. Gen. John
Abizaid, is Franks's secret information weapon. Since
Abizaid speaks fluent Arabic, why doesn't he hold a
cool news conference with angry Arab journalists?
12. Most inspiring journalism: "embedding" is
almost-full disclosure that puts Americans in close
contact with local conflict, but the greatest war
correspondent of this generation is not attached to
any unit. He is John Burns of The Times, who is
reporting with great insight, accuracy and courage
from Baghdad and makes me proud to work on the same
newspaper. (Among TV anchors, a lesser calling, the
best organized are MSNBC's John Seigenthaler, CNN's
Paula Zahn and Wolf Blitzer, and Fox's Tony Snow.)
13. Greatest wartime mysteries: What tales of
special-ops derring-do await the telling? Who, in the
fog of peace, will honor Iraqis inside Baghdad
spotting military targets to save civilians? Will we
learn first-hand of the last days of Saddam in his
Hitlerian bunker? What scientists, murdered lest they
point the way to germs and poison gases, left
incriminating documents behind? Where are the secret
files of Saddam's Mukhabarat, detailing the venal
transactions with Western, Asian, Arab and Persian
political and business leaders � and connections to
world terror networks?
Snap judgments, these. Considered conclusions come
after unconditional surrender.
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq:
Your enemy is not surrounding your country � your enemy is ruling your
country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be
the day of your liberation." -George W. Bush 1/29/03
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