I'll admit it, it's hard not to be moved by the pictures and stories coming of out of Baghdad, though I wish those were balanced more often with pictures of the thousands of Iraqis we have killed and maimed to get to this point. We should also keep in mind that liberation scenes such as these are often performed for successful invading armies, with varying degrees of sincerity but many immediate practical goals. Baghdad citizens are doubtless keen for the U.S. troops to know that they need not shoot or bomb them anymore. Saddam's cannier supporters will want to make the invaders welcome, too, the better to stay off the suspect lists and duck any regime change that might be coming their way. (The Baath Party also still has open supporters, even today.) There's a better-than-average chance that lower-level government officials who make friendly with the new bosses now might have jobs waiting for them when the new government is created. (I need to find the link on that.) After all, there are only so many neocons and exile leaders to go around, and in some cases their Arabic is not so good. 

Nevertheless, as an early Americanist, I am a sucker for the part where they pull the king's statue down. "I'm 49, but I never lived a single day. Only now will I start living," one icon-smasher told the Washington Post. If the U.S. really keeps it promises to the Iraqi people, if it really does act with concern for the welfare of ordinary people (something not done at home too often lately), and really does allow Iraqis to choose their own leaders (something the U.S. does not have a very strong record of doing in these situations), then we may indeed look back on this as a great achievement. This was one crappy dictatorship in a world full of them that we just felled -- not the Nazi empire or the Soviet Union, but it was considerably more than nothing. Even those of us who believe that the price of toppling Saddam when and how we did was too high should still celebrate the toppling.

I have my doubts that we really will keep all those promises, at least not in a way that will leave the Iraqis or the Arab world with much of its self-respect intact. Dick Cheney is looking forward to getting the gas pumps flowing again, for the benefit of the Iraqi people of course, who will get to pay Americans to help rebuild from the damage that other Americans just caused. Let's hope that arrangement won't be the seed of an Iraqi radical nationalist movement that the U.S. will subsequently crush.

Size Matters

It's hard to tell what's in store for Iraqis as law and order disappear along with tyranny. Over here, we have the terrible economy and Republican pillaging to contend with, as well as another long period of right-wing chest-thumping and posturing. The egregious William Safire continues the tradition of not being able to tell the difference between a colonial intervention and World War freaking II. And every liberal or former liberal who ever detected an ugly Freudian note to right-wing bellicosity should check this National Review Online piece if they dare. Suffice to say that some seem to value the war for its proof of what we've got in our national underwear.