NOW, THE KIDS

Yep, over a hundred children – yes, children – escaped from a Saddam prison today. They had been jailed because they wouldn’t join the Hitler, er, Saddam Youth. They are deliriously happy, along with their parents. They gave the G.I.s two signs: a thumbs-up and then they held their wrists together to signify that they had been chained up. On the same day, James Carroll of the Boston Globe asks this question: “Does your nation any longer know that it, too, is part of the human family? That that family is now warning of a fatal loss of trust in the ideal for which the American flag has so long stood? Are that flag, and all who have carried it, honored by what is being done under its sign today?” Carroll’s answer is no. Maybe he should usher those kids back into prison himself.

HOW IS R.W. APPLE STILL EMPLOYED?

Read Jack Shafer’s alternately hilarious and damning piece about New York Times “news analyst,” Johnny Apple. Apple makes MoDo look well-informed. Only in the cocoon of 43rd Street could such a writer, who gets everything wrong, contradicts himself from day to day, and writes in prose worthy of Anne Lamott could still get front-page play day after day. I guess he performs something of a purpose. As Will Saletan notes, “How will we know when the coalition has won the war? The day Johnny Apple says they’ve lost it.” Actually, the day before.

IS IT OVER?

As I write, we still don’t know if Saddam has been killed. I sure hope so. But we do know that this war is almost as good as won after three weeks. The Saddam regime no longer controls its two biggest cities; its armed forces seem in disarray; Saddam’s palaces are occupied by G.I.s. Again, measure this against Kenneth Pollack’s neutral projection:

Probably the most likely scenario would be about one third of Iraq’s armed forces fighting hard, limited use of tactical WMD, and some extensive combat in a few cities. In this most likely case, the campaign would probably last four to eight weeks and result in roughly 500 to 1,000 American combat deaths.

Three weeks. Under 100 American casualties, half of which came from accidents. No use of tactical WMD. Extraordinarily targeted bombing; exceptionally light force; oil wells intact; Israel secure; Turks kept at bay. War is terrible, of course. It may flare up again for a while. There’s still a chance of last-minute atrocities. And every civilian casualty is a tragedy. But it’s beginning to look as if this was an amazing military campaign, something of which the American and British people – and their governments – can be deeply, deeply proud.

NOT A WAR

John Keegan, arguably the best military historian around, has the goods on the bizarre campaign now concluding. Why did Saddam do everything wrong in the defense of Iraq? How was victory so swift? It seems to me that in retrospect, when this war is properly analyzed and chronicled, it may well be that the question is far less: “What did the allies do wrong?” than “What did Saddam do right?” Money quote:

Because the war has taken such a strange form, the media, particularly those at home, may be forgiven for their misinterpretation of how it has progressed. Checks have been described as defeats, minor firefights as major battles. In truth, there has been almost no check to the unimpeded onrush of the coalition, particularly the dramatic American advance to Baghdad; nor have there been any major battles. This has been a collapse, not a war.

Keegan is particularly brutal about the Western media’s coverage. Their spin was almost as pathetic as Saddam’s defense. And just as effective.

THE SCENES THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT CAN’T STAND

From the Guardian no less:

Many local people seemed genuinely happy to see the army rolling past, laughing and joking even as they were stopped to be frisked at the checkpoints into and out of the city. A jubilant crowd of about 100 Iraqis surrounded two British tanks sitting side by side near a mural of Saddam Hussein and started cheering the soldiers inside and giving the thumbs-up sign. Soldiers were handed pink carna tions and yellow flowers. Abdul Karim, an English teacher, was wandering through the city late in the day. He was standing opposite a burning building, painted with the inevitable portrait of Saddam He said it was used as a food warehouse by the Ba’ath party and that it had been looted and set on fire. He said he had a BA in English. “It’s great, it’s great,” he said with an expansive gesture. “The Fedayeen have gone. They left on Saturday and Sunday. It is fantastic.”

One obvious point: if it weren’t for Bush and Blair, these people would still be in a living hell. But the U.N. would be happy.

THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT: It now commands 16 percent support in the population at large. Boomers, the group most likely to be seeing this war through the prism of Vietnam, now support it in greater numbers than any other age-group. Here’s an email from someone perhaps typical of his generation:

I am part of that baby boomer generation and like many I demonstrated against that war in Viet Nam. But unlike some I do realize it is not 1969 anymore. Viet Nam was a very long, costly and ugly war. The divisions did not come overnight and for many they will not go away. It is part of their identity, their very purpose in life. Many felt the same after the American Civil War. It took a generation then and it might take a generation now for enough time and distance to come about to see that war and its legacy in proper perspective. I supported the government in this endeavor for the simple reason that I am an American and I don’t like fascist dictators the likes of Saddam Hussein. They can call that simplistic, but then again so is their knee jerk anti Americanism. There is nothing sadder than an old hippie trying to regain his/her youth through the manipulation of others and at the expense of a suffering people they claim to feel sympathy for. I hate the destruction, but I also hate doing nothing while hundreds of thousands of people die. I guess some of my generation and the UN security council have no such qualms.

Has any large protest movement been this much of a failure so soon?

BUSH AND INDEPENDENTS

It’s his weak-spot. They don’t trust his tax cuts and they worry about the deficit. I guess I should put it on record that although I’m underwhelmed by the Democratic candidates in the field, I think the president is far more vulnerable in terms of re-election than some seem to think. Check out these poll numbers during a successful war. Not encouraging data among independents for the White House. Check out also the bonanza fund-raising among Democrats, especially John Edwards. In some ways, Bush may be more vulnerable the more successful he is in foreign policy. People may warm to a Democrat who promises them relief from the drama of the war on terror. Of course, the odds are still with Bush. And he shouldn’t take his eye off foreign policy. The war against terror is only near the end of its beginning. But he does need to address run-away government spending, boost his compassionate conservative image, and re-engage domestically. The odds are not that the economy is heading for a Krugman-like collapse. But it could well grow quite quickly without generating enough jobs to keep the unemployment level below 7 percent. That spells trouble for the incumbent.

A STORY OF FAITH: At a time when the church seems rudderless, it’s always good to hear stories like this one.

VON HOFFMAN AWARD NOMINEE

“The main flaws are now plain. First, the strategy left very long supply lines exposed and vulnerable. Troops require water and tanks require gasoline. Without these, no force 250 miles from base will be useful for long. Second, Iraqi soldiers embedded in civilian populations – both those along supply lines and in Baghdad – can only be destroyed alongside those populations. Thus the Iraqis could force the transformation of the second strategy into the first. And, being military realists, they have done so. The dilemma is now acute. Retreat is unthinkable. George W. Bush’s neoconservatives (standing safely in the back) will figuratively execute any who quail. The level of violence will therefore be raised. Meanwhile, the prime stocks of precision munitions have been drawn down, and speculation about the future use of cluster bombs and napalm and other vile weapons is being heard. And so the political battle – the battle for hearts and minds – will be lost. If history is a guide, you cannot subdue a large and hostile city except by destroying it completely. Short of massacre, we will not inherit a pacified Iraq. For this reason, the project of reconstruction is impossible. No one should imagine that the civilians sent in to do this work can be made secure. To support “the groundwork” for this effort is to support a holocaust, quite soon, against Iraqi civilians and also against the troops on both sides. That is what victory means. You can watch the beginnings (if you have satellite television) even now, as injured children fill up the hospitals of Baghdad. The moral strategy would be to avoid the holocaust. To achieve that from the present disastrous position, the United States would have to accept a cease-fire, which would lead to the withdrawal of coalition forces under safe conduct. There would be no military dishonor in such a step. It would, however, entail the humiliation of the entire Bush administration, indeed its well-deserved political collapse. Too bad the moral strategy is not a practical one.” – James Galbraith, the American Prospect. How can a single person get so much so wrong?