When The Cheering Stops

How do you recognize freedom on the street if you've never met her before? The people of Baghdad got to dance and kiss Marines, argue politics in the park and pray in a mosque that had been padlocked for years. But maybe liberation feels real only when it includes the chance to be bad. Vandalism and violence were not just freedom's product; they were its proof. You know it is a new world when you can slap your shoes on the tyrant's face, spit on it and slash it, when you can break a window and steal a chair, wheel a refrigerator away on roller skates, drive down the wrong side of the street--all conduct unthinkable just 24 hours before or at any time during the 8,000-day reign of Saddam Hussein, which has finally come to an end.

Americans watched in relief at the sight of U.S. soldiers hugging and feeding Iraqi children at last, hoping that the end of the war had at least begun. But the rebirth of a nation is messy and humbling, especially when it was brought about through battle. Many Iraqis were celebrating, but some were still shooting; some were pausing to rejoice on their way toward revenge. Baghdad was free for exactly one day before the first suicide bomber appeared; a few days later, 40 more bomb-stuffed vests were found in an elementary school. The Red Cross had to suspend operations after one worker was killed in cross fire, and there was little use rushing medicine into hospitals that had been stripped by looters to their last light bulb. Even as the other cities toppled--first Kirkuk, then Mosul--there were still people in Iraq who had nothing to do but fight and look for a chance to ambush a soldier with his guard down. From the comfort of their living rooms, Americans watched NBC broadcast a fire fight outside Baghdad so fierce that one wounded soldier was still firing from his stretcher, and the chaplain had to grab a rifle. Some of the biggest air strikes of the entire war came the night after Baghdad fell.

And then there is Saddam. It is testimony to the depth of his tyranny that rumors spread of how he survived yet again, this time escaping the four tons of bombs dropped on the house that a spy thinks he entered on Monday. There were claims that Saddam was whisked to his hometown, Tikrit, or that he was on his way to Syria for medical care, that he was hiding in the Russian embassy or in a mosque or was seen rising from the sunroof of his limo in downtown Baghdad, come to let the crowds kiss his feet. No one in Washington could be absolutely sure whether they had got him this time. But they were sure they had his airport, his palaces and, by Wednesday, his power.