Ding dong, the witch is dead. The Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, and his Baath political party have been deposed from power in Iraq. The last Baath stronghold in Hussein's hometown of Tikrit is under assault by coalition forces, and all the oil fires in Southern Iraq have been extinguished. \n Whether or not you supported the idea of war, the offensive has been, at least on the surface, a success. Saddam is gone, some proof of chemical weapons has been found, and the oil is safe from other rouge nations and angry extremists. \n So now that Pentagon Major General Stanley McChrystal said in an Associated Press report that "major combat engagements are over," perhaps the coalition forces should lend a hand to help the newly-freed Iraqi people maintain order in their now leaderless country. \n When you pull the rug out from under someone, now matter how dirty the rug may be, the person on the rug will fall backwards. The Iraqi people have had the leadership rug swiped from under their feet, and to this point there hasn't been anything behind to catch the falling populace. \nVarious AP reports quoted Iraqis talking about the things that were being stolen by looters. One report stated looters were stealing incubators and testing supplies from a hospital. At another hospital, surgeons and doctors went about their rounds with assault rifles on one shoulder and stethoscopes on the other to defend themselves against the random pillaging.\nSome Iraqi police officers have been asked to accompany coalition forces on patrols, but the damage continues to occur. Tuesday, looters broke into the Iraqi National Museum and stole priceless treasures from millenia ago. Many of the artifacts stolen or destroyed are irreplaceable. \nAccording to a Tuesday New York Times story, over 50,000 artifacts were stolen. Much of the stolen materials were not just historically important to Iraq, but the world. Many of the artifacts will be sold on the black market to the highest bidders to add to their private collections. Ironically, the highest bidders for these sorts of thing will likely be American collectors.\nThe coalition forces need to finish the job they started and secure Iraq from further destruction. Their nation may now be free, but what good will it be to them if their nation is in shambles? Letting the country fall into disarray will only further villify the U.S. in the eyes of the international community and undermine U.S. efforts to convince other nations that war was in fact justified. If coalition forces help the Iraqis, they help themselves.
-- George Lyle IV for the Editorial Board
