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These past two months have shown that an innovative doctrine and high-tech weaponry can shape and then dominate an unconventional conflict. The brave men and women of our military are rewriting the rules of war. . . . Our commanders are gaining a real-time picture of the entire battlefield and are able to get targeting information from sensor to shooter almost instantly. . . . We’re striking with greater effectiveness, at greater range, with fewer civilian casualties. More and more, our weapons can hit moving targets. When all of our military can continuously locate and track moving targets with surveillance from air and space, warfare will be truly revolutionized.12

The march on Baghdad served to highlight these capabilities on an even larger scale. Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20, 2003. By April 9, U.S. forces had taken the Iraqi capital, Saddam Hussein was in hiding, and his army had all but ceased to exist.

Administration officials immediately set out to interpret the military significance of what had occurred. The deed was done. The Pentagon had, in fact, consummated a revolution. History had rounded a corner and was entering the home stretch.

During his presentation on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln that May 1, a cocky President Bush, already referring to Operation Iraqi Freedom in the past tense, elaborated on the significance of the campaign now (apparently) concluding. The invasion of Iraq, he rhapsodized, “was carried out with a combination of precision and speed and boldness the enemy did not expect and the world had not seen before. In the images of falling statues,” the president continued,

we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. For a hundred years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale. . . . Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation. Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war; yet it is a great moral advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.13

In an appearance at a conservative Washington think tank that same day, Vice President Dick Cheney seconded his boss, declaring that “Iraqi Freedom has been one of the most extraordinary military campaigns ever conducted.” Victory in Iraq offered “proof positive of the success of our efforts to transform our military to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.” Transformation had “allowed us to integrate joint operations much more effectively than ever before, thereby enabling commanders to make decisions more rapidly, to target strikes more precisely, to minimize human casualties, civilian casualties, and to accomplish the missions more successfully.”14

In testimony before the House Government Reform Committee on May 6, Wolfowitz went even further:

Our unparalleled ability to conduct night operations has allowed us to virtually own the night, and the close integration of our forces has resulted in an order of magnitude change in how precise we are in finding and hitting targets from just a decade ago. . . .

As we have seen so vividly in recent days, lives depend, not just on technology, but on a culture that fosters leadership, flexibility, agility and adaptability. The American people need and deserve a transformed Defense Department.15

Out of this cascade of self-congratulation, one word pulled away from the pack to emerge as the signature for the new American way of war: speed. U.S. forces possessed the ability to dictate the tempo of events. They acted; the enemy reacted, belatedly and ineffectively. The United States “owned the clock,” a priceless asset.16

In a hastily prepared history of the Iraq invasion, retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales cut to the essence:

In war, speed kills, especially if military