It's three weeks on from the word "go", and our forces own Baghdad.

I'm curious: is anyone still upset that our political and military leaders took as long as they did, planning and preparing, marshalling their forces? Does anyone recall, much less still feel, the frustration experienced when December arrived and we still hadn't attacked, then January, then February, then March? Is anyone still saying "faster, please"?

Yes, the Iraqi regime had a little extra time in which to murder more of its citizens. But rushing the war preparations might have resulted in more deaths still. The timetable followed may very well have been the optimal one, in terms of reducing overall losses.

I'm not holding myself up as an exemplar of patience here; I was as irritated as everyone else that we waited as long as we did at the starting line. But I was wrong. Tommy Franks knew exactly what he was doing, and how to do it best.*

That may very well be our biggest strategic shortcoming as a nation: the impatience of our electorate, and the even greater impatience of our media.

*It should be especially embarrassing to those who were appalled that the invasion started shortly after the full moon. Given the quality of our forces' night-vision gear, our greatest tactical advantage is during the near-complete darkness of the new moon (which occurred most recently on April 1).

But had our forces crossed the starting line at the Iraq-Kuwait border on April 1st (or on the previous new moon), they would have wasted that valuable interval simply finding, reaching, and assessing the enemy. By the time the fight was truly joined, the moonlight would have started to return.

Instead, our military leaders did exactly the right thing: they started the invasion a fortnight before the new moon. They did what was necessary in terms of disaster prevention (securing oil fields, securing port facilities that could be used to create an oil spill); but other than that, they concentrated on moving as far and as fast as possible. This let them spread out our forces (making them less vulnerable to a WMD spoiler attack), and let them find better tactical locations from which to attack. The resistance that our forces encountered (and mostly bypassed) let our troops -- some of whom had never been in battle before -- get acclimated to what they would be facing; and also provided valuable intel on the location, strength, and tactics of the enemy.

Remember the "operational pause" after the big initial push? That gave our troops a chance to rest, recoup, assess, and do preventive maintenance on their weapons and vehicles. So when the fighting resumed, our troops were in tactically advantageous positions; both tempered by the initial fight and recovered from it; and facing an enemy whose measure had been taken, and who had been softened up by both air bombardment and psychops mindgames. And it was surely no coincidence that the operational pause ended just as the last of the moonlight went away.

After that, the Iraqi forces collapsed with stunning swiftness.

Superbly done.