KUWAIT

OUTSIDE the MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) tent at this dusty camp in Kuwait, a 40-inch television blares updates on the war.

The battleground is a black hole of sorts; the TV keeps soldiers posted on their progress in a way commanders can’t.

It was here that an Army captain, just off the plane from America, saw the fall of Saddam Hussein – not the dictator, but the statue that put up a stronger fight than the Iraqi army.

This captain, who is not as fresh-faced as the younger soldiers who pretend to shave, has heard a number of explanations about why he is here sleeping on tent floors, eating pre-packaged food out of plastic bags and going to the portable toilet with a gas mask on his hip.

Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, they told him. Saddam has abused his own people, they said. The regime has harbored terrorists, they explained. The Iraqi people must be free.

The captain thought about all those things as he saw the chain go around the statue’s neck; the Iraqi locals had been struggling to pull it down themselves.

It wasn’t Saddam himself, but it was a symbol, the next best thing. Though the captain had yet to join the fighting, a feeling of pride surged under his U.S. Army patch, the one that covers his heart.

He spoke to himself: “I understand why I’m here.”

Then he saw it, that other symbol, the one that some of his friends have died for, the one stitched to the shoulder of the uniform he puts on every day.

The flag. Ol’ Glory. Wrapped around the face of a statue. A dictator draped in stars and stripes. “I kind of cringed when I saw it,” the captain said.

So did America.

Sure, the approval ratings shot through the roof, and the victory in Baghdad tasted sweet even to the anti-war crowd. But the flag on the face was a big mistake.

“We’re not supposed to be an occupying nation,” the captain said. They had told him that, too.

The captain said he would hate to be the Marine commander who signed off on the flag-flying. The captain had an image of someone at the Pentagon picking up the red phone and telling the soldiers to take it down.

But it was too late. The world had already seen it live.

Along with death, wars and uprisings produce images that last forever. We remember the flag that was planted at Iwo Jima. We remember the protester who stared down the tank in Tiananmen Square. And we’ll remember the Saddam statue that fell like a tall tree.

But we should not forget the images that send the wrong message.

Saddam’s new headdress did not stay for long, a few minutes, perhaps. But it was long enough to tell the truth about war: War has winners, and war has losers. There are conquerors and there are conquered.