Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins of the Royal Irish captured not just the right note, but the only note, in his address to his men before battle began last Wednesday.
"We go to liberate, not to conquer. We are entering Iraq to free a people. We will not fly flags in their country. Show respect for them," he said.
This is a war that must now be won, but the manner in which it is won is as important as the victory itself.
And what happens afterwards will pose even more acute dilemmas.
Evident care has been taken to ensure that the targets singled out by precision-guided bombs are governmental and military.
The vital physical infrastructure that will support successful reconstruction is, as far as possible, not being attacked.
Infinitely more leaflets urging surrender and subsequent safe conduct have been dropped on Iraqi soldiers than bombs.
This is as it should and must be. The ardent hope is that a quick and relatively bloodless victory can be achieved with these intentions kept intact and that Iraq does not use the chemical and biological weapons which will tempt some, especially in Washington, to abandon the strategy. This war is understood by those inside and outside Iraq as a war against a tyrannical and duplicitous dictator.
Anglo-American force is directed as far as possible against him and his military infrastructure of repression.
It is a strategy that must be adhered to, notwithstanding any short-term reverses in the field, not least because it is already clear that American force of arms is overwhelming. The only issue is when and how victory will be achieved, rather than whether. Britain must insist that the strategy is sustained to what we must hope is the quick capitulation of Baghdad.
Then comes peace and Iraqi reconstruction, and the fundamental issues raised by Robin Cook in his interview with The Observer yesterday. There is no doubt that the divisions about Iraq that made agreement over a second UN resolution so difficult will become further entrenched regardless of military victory. The former Foreign Secretary worries about whether coherence can be sustained within the UN, the EU and NATO. He thinks that sooner or later Britain is going to have to say "No" to Washington if the US asserts a desire to recast the international system around American political imperatives.
The British continue to insist that multilateralism and the rule of international law must be respected, despite all the evident setbacks. For us, Hussein is a threat who must be removed, and whose menace should have brought the international community together. British Prime Minister Tony Blair strived to achieve as much legality and legitimacy as he could.
His failure to win support for a second UN resolution does not justify completely recasting the rules of the international system. It is not in Britain's interests to become a permanent part of a "coalition of the willing," intervening in whichever states some opinion in Washington dictates, if the rules of the game are only set by the US and the institutions of international law abandoned. It is not even in America's interests, as Cook argues, to proceed as if the support of the rest of the world does not matter. Allies are very important, not least to share some of the huge costs of reconstruction and peacekeeping.
RSS