New Day in Ancient Land

It was a metal symbol, not flesh and blood, but the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square recalled the displaying of Benito Mussolini’s corpse in Milan in 1945 and the firing-squad execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife on Christmas Day 1989. It has always been like this for tyrants.

In Baghdad and other cities now controlled by U.S. and British forces, Iraqi mobs removed, defaced and destroyed pictures and statues of Hussein. The successes in the capital after three weeks of war are a tribute to the generals who planned the campaign and the sergeants who executed it.

Administration officials and military commanders cautioned that tough fighting may be ahead, in parts of Baghdad and especially to the north, near Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. But whatever coming days bring, there is much to cheer about in what did not happen during days past.

Iraq did not fire a single missile at Israel, thanks to quick military occupation of the western desert. Turkey has not moved great numbers of soldiers into the Kurdish area of Iraq, heeding repeated warnings from the United States. British and U.S. troops seized southern oil fields before they could be set afire. Iraq’s Republican Guard, which analysts said fought hard but not well in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, did not do even that.

Retired generals had accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of using too few troops, especially when cities bypassed in the rush to Baghdad turned out to harbor guerrillas who fired on supply convoys. That slowed the march, as did withering sandstorms. Rumsfeld defended the war plan, which he credited to the war’s commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, and his colleagues. Franks granted field commanders flexibility, which allowed them to recover from setbacks and resume their advance more rapidly than expected.

In one instance, a U.S. soldier briefly draped a statue of Hussein in a U.S. flag -- an act that Arab-language television network Al Jazeera used as an example of America’s self-interested motives. But overall the soldiers and Marines displayed sensitivity to Iraqi culture. Last week in Najaf, a city sacred to Shiite Muslims, crowds feared that troops were coming to arrest a leading clergyman. Instead, the soldiers respectfully dropped to one knee, calming the crowd.

Much remains to be done in the war, let alone in the aftermath. Capturing Hussein or proving him dead would be one element of a convincing victory; the escapes of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar in Afghanistan still rankle. Discovery of chemical and perhaps biological weapons is a political imperative, though it may have to await Iraqi scientists newly willing to disclose the weapons’ whereabouts. The pressing need in liberated areas is food, water and medicine.

The diplomatic struggles ahead over Iraq’s rebuilding may be hellishly complicated, possibly alienating to both the Arab world and once-fast U.S. allies. But Wednesday was a historic day in the land often considered the cradle of civilization. It was a day that, if things go even half-right in the months ahead, may be celebrated for years in Iraq as the end of a dictator who gassed his own people, invaded his neighbors, tortured and killed his enemies and for three decades kept millions of Iraqis in fear.