Friday, March 28, 2003 | 4:39 a.m.
MANAGING expectations downward.
I am one of the millions of foolish Americans who believed that an American invasion of Iraq to end the regime of Saddam Hussein would be over in a matter of days with a minimum of U.S. casualities. It appears now, after a week and a half, that I was wrong. At least, that is what President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair told us this past Thursday.
The dynamic duo did their level best to dampen the enthusiasm their countrymen have had for a quick resolution to this war by explaining that the outcome -- the removal of Saddam from Iraq and, most probably, from any worldly involvement going forward -- was a certainty, and only the timetable was up for debate.
In fact, President Bush was especially clear about that point. When asked how long the war would last, his answer was pointed: "However long it takes. That's the answer to your question, and that's what you got to know."
Prime Minister Blair was a bit more eloquent in his response -- not the kind of contrast I would continue to foster if I were in the president's position -- choosing to educate as well as inform: "We will carry on until the job is done. But there is absolutely no point, in my view, of trying to set a time limit or speculate on it, because it is not set by time. It's set by the nature of the job."
Toward that end, it seems to me that winning this war and ousting Saddam -- permanently so -- is job one. And, however long that takes, as the president says, is how long it will take.
Now that we have gotten that straight, what about the real reason for the press conference from Camp David last week? And that is the need to lower the expectations of America about the severity of the war and the toll it will take on coalition forces.
We know we can wait for as long as it takes because we have no choice. But why do we have to pay witness to the body bags that are starting to mount in numbers -- albeit it small ones to date -- when our expectations were to see very few, if any, at all? That seems to be the question on many American minds and one that was not answered at Camp David.
My generation is the one that managed to survive the Vietnam War days. I don't mean the war itself -- we lost over 50,000 of our own in that one -- but the political turmoil at home that practically tore asunder all that our Founding Fathers had created. Families split along generational lines, as did the entire country as knowledge of the war spread and, as a direct result, its popularity decreased. Once we understood the rationale for our sending hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops halfway across the world, support waned and a once-proud United States of America was forced to declare victory on the way out the door.
That is not the case in Iraq. Most Americans understand the necessity of exposing two-bit dictators who possess weapons of mass destruction or the will to obtain them and deposing them before they can do real damage to peace- and freedom-loving people. That rationale alone puts us way ahead of any stated purpose that may have prompted our Vietnam adventure.
But this is 40 years later. Our abilities in the war-making department have increased a hundredfold, especially in the technological arena, to the point that we can win most skirmishes from 30,000 feet. That doesn't mean we don't have to set a foot in the country we are attacking, but it does mean that when we do go in, our troops need not be directly in most harm's way.
No one should be naive enough to think that war is still not hell. It has always been and will be ever thus. People get killed, on purpose and by accident, and that is just the nature of such things. But we should expect that to the extent that hell can be mitigated for our people in uniform, we should do all that we can.
At last count, some 47 men and women have been lost by U.S. and British forces with fewer than two dozen missing in action. Nevadans have not been spared. Those numbers are manageable and, if I can sound like a commander for a moment, acceptable given the circumstances. But to the families and loved ones, of course, they are totally unacceptable, however understandable they may be.
It is this point that harkens me back to the Vietnam era and former Sen. Barry Goldwater from Arizona. He ran for president in 1964 and was handed the kind of defeat usually reserved for doves in a hawk's world. In his case, though, he was the hawk. By the way, New York senator and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was a very vocal and outstanding supporter of Goldwater in those days.
Throughout Sen. Goldwater's life he remained a staunch and unwavering supporter of the men and women in uniform. That love and respect for those who were willing to give their all formed his opinion in Vietnam that we must stop pussyfooting around, trying to make political decisions with the lives of our servicemen. He said it so all could understand his words. When you go to war, you go to win. No half-measures, no halfhearted decisions that risk one more American life than necessary.
At the time we called him a warmonger and denied him a chance at the White House. In hindsight, we have come to realize just how right he was. That brings us to today and to Iraq.
There are any number of political reasons -- not the least of which is our ability to rebuild a peaceful and accepting Iraq following Saddam's departure -- that suggest that hand-to-hand combat and urban street fighting is preferable to carpet bombing Baghdad to make sure there will be no one left to kill our troops when they move in to get Saddam. There always are political reasons to go easier than we should because all decisions at that level are difficult. Someone dies and someone -- the president in this case -- has to make that call.
If, by lengthening the war a few months will ensure a minimum of U.S. casualties going forward, then by all means let the war take "however long it takes." But if President Bush gets antsy and wants this thing over sooner rather than later, then he needs to consider the Goldwater approach to war. If the decision comes down to an innocent Iraqi shielding a Saddam loyalist who is waiting in the shadows to kill our men and women, then that decision must come down on the side of American life.
Americans expect to win this war in Iraq. Americans expect to do that with the absolute minimum of friendly casualties. And we expect to get all this done as soon as possible so we can get on to the business of making the rest of the world a safer place and our own little world a saner place.
We don't need our expectations managed downward. We just expect to have them met.
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