Anbar equals Gettysburg

For the past two years, I've been operating with the assumption that the battle for Baghdad was one of the consequential battles in history: our Ilium, our Marathon, our Hastings, our Agincourt, our Saratoga, our Waterloo, our San Jacinto, our Gettysburg, our Midway, our Normandy, our Inchon, our (and here the narrative darkens) Tet.

Growing up, and beyond, I've thrilled to the stories of my favorites: to Agincourt, in which Henry V's "band of brothers" defeated a French contingent five times its size; to Saratoga, in which the brilliance of Benedict Arnold crushed General Burgoyne's British contingent heading south from Canada--a victory that assured, at a minimum, Colonial home rule (afterwards King George III sued for peace, at any terms except outright independence); to Waterloo, which was won, the Duke of Wellington said, on the playing fields of Eton; to San Jacinto, in which Sam Houston, no dummy when it came to military history--and knowing that Santa Anna viewed himself as the Latin Napolean--played the part of Wellington, and, as Wellington had with Napolean at Waterloo, lured Santa Anna into a trap under the pretense of running for his life. In the 11th grade I gave a report on Gettysburg, the Tet of its time, the battle that destroyed the Confederacy as an offensive fighting force (all of Lee's battles for the final months of the war would be defensive), but, played out with the communication technology of a hundred years later, might have prodded the Walter Cronkite of his time to declare the war unwinnable.

Later on? Had Midway been taken by the opposition, the Japanese would have been able to run 24-hour bombing raids on Hawaii. Normandy we take as read. And I hold a special place in my heart for the story of MacArthur sweeping ashore at Inchon, helped by historically (and expected) high tides, the better to help the servicemen breach the city's high walls--and, in the process, and despite how badly things turned out in the end, assure a free South Korea.

This is how I pictured Baghdad. No matter the blunders (and there have been many), no matter the losses (and there have been many) this is the fight these men and women have to win. This is the battle upon which our whole extended fight against the forces of inhumanity hinges. And the whole world is watching.

Except . . . . except now that I read this, I have another notion.

Anbar.

Anbar is our Gettysburg, our Tet. It is the point at which the counter-offensive must be turned back, or not.

What happens here will affect the next twenty years.