10 April 2003

The Fat Lady Sings

It is not raining this morning, but the chipper woman on the radio is telling me that it will later. April showers and May flowers and all that. Things are changing. Our national attention deficit disorder is beginning to manifest itself. For the first time in months the lead story on Morning Edition is about something other than the war. A boarding school fire in Russia claimed the lives of dozens of children. That must mean something. I saw Yogi Berra the other morning, warming up to throw out the first pitch in New York. He looked pretty good, and I assume he is alive. At least none of the commentators noted that there was nothing to prove that it was thise opening day, or something recorded in the past to be played when necessary. Maybe it was pre-recorded, like Saddam. So I can't comment definitively on whether it was really Yogi or a body-double or some digital bit of Hollywood chicanery. But I do know that the real Yogi, speaking live and in person from an undisclosed location, summed it up as well as anyone who ever lived. He said "It ain't over till it's over."

And it ain't. According to the BBC, Kurdish pesh murga and some Special Forces guys took Kirkuk last night. That leaves Mosul unreduced in the North, and the Adnan Republican Guard Division arrayed around Saddam's ancestral home at Tikrit. There was a firefight in Baghdad, too, and some more U.S. casualties. So even if we hear Brunhilde warming up in the background, practicing her falsetto, this ain't over. A less-than-a-month campaign was a pretty good show, best in reality TV history. There was real sacrifice and real heroism and the pain and discomfort of combat was brought to us live.

But there are some miscues, too. I was stunned to see the young Marine wrap the American flag over the face of the giant Saddam statue in Firdos Square. Where was his company officer? Where were the PsyOps guys to manage this thing? Why was there not a plan to manage the media event? Even in the moment of triumph we were unable to find a commercial truck and a cable and some costumed Agency extras to help the Iraqis topple the image of Saddam.

To the Arab world it must have looked like the Marines and a handful of stooges. Another display of raw American power. At least it would have looked like that if I was running a state TV network. Of course, no one has asked me to do that. And Saddam is still on the loose if he is not disassociated molecules in the rubble of the restaurant. The rumors are still flying about that. One claims that he was there but finished his cutlet and departed just before the bombs hit the place. Word this morning has him holed up in a Mosque, wrapping himself at the end in the faith he treated with disdain in the days of his power.

You have doubtless seen the e-mail going around about Saddam. His body-doubles are called in by security in Tikrit. "The good news is that Saddam lives" says the general. "The bad news is that he lost an arm and a leg."

But for all that, we have apparently reached Secretary Rumsfeld's "tipping point." We can definitely say that the end of the beginning is over. In addition to the lead story on NPR, for the first time since the war began, planes from the Third Marine Air Wing returned to base with some of their bombs. With most of the Iraqi force routed, the Marines could not find enough targets to strike.

So all we need to do now is mop up, solve the Palestinian-Isreali problem, ensure fairness throughout the region, accommodate some of the equities of the French, Germans and Russians, placate Cofi Annan and the Security Council and figure out what the North Koreans are up to. Kim Chong Il has been quiet lately, or maybe he realizes that the Marines going home to Camp Pendleton will have to pass right by the neighborhood. So maybe the demonstration of resolve and high technology has had a positive value in the calculus of great power politics.

Mamoun Fandy is a columnist for a daily Arabic paper in London called Asharq al-Awsat. He has an OpEd in the Times this morning recounting, recounting two messages rocketing around the world electronically. The first one is about the marvelous Iraqi Information minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, who was last seen giving a press conference in the parking lot of the Palestine Hotel, announcing the destruction of Coalition forces at the gates of Baghdad. During one of the questions a Marine Bradley fighting vehicle can be seen driving behind him. The Islamic world may be bitter and angry about the occupation of Iraq, but they are not stupid. The joke in Riyadh and Cairo goes like this: "When al-Sahhaf died they sent him 63 angels," it goes. "Three of them are asking him questions about his life, and 60 are trying to convince him that he's really dead."

"Young Assad of Syria sent Bush a message telling him that if he wants him to go, he doesn't have to go through that much trouble. He can just send a text message on his cell phone."

We'll see. Did you hear anyone singing?