Quoted

If you don't read Lileks.com daily, you should:

"The statue of Saddam that clanged down onto the stones of Baghdad looked familiar to anyone who’s studied Soviet iconography - which of course Saddam did. The hand-waving-to-the-masses is an ambiguous gesture; it recognizes the masses, but does not salute them. He points to the sky, but there’s something about that pose that says you’d damn well better be looking at him, not where he’s pointing.

A friend who spent a lot of time in the USSR referred to this genre of statuary as “The Great Leader Hails a Cab.”

You hope Saddam’s alive to see this, to see the hailstorm of footwear, the burly men taking sledgehammers to his statue’s polished podium, to see the American flag draped over his cruel empty mug. That last point was one of the more remarkable moments today - the soldier put the flag over Saddam’s iron face, then removed it and replaced it with the old Iraqi flag. It’s a potent message. A show of power, then a show of respect. Our flag first; your flag for ever after. Don’t forget how the latter was made possible by the former.

You will, of course, but that’s how it goes. We look forward to your Nay vote on our resolution in the League of Democracies Security Council 58 years from today.

Can you imagine the parties in Baghdad this week? Hospitals had best make a rubber stamp that says GEORGE, because nine months from now they’re going to use it on every other birth certificate.

If all goes well. Which it won’t. The Fog of Peace comes next; we will hear many stories of Setbacks and Troubling Developments and Roadblocks to Peace and the rest of the vocabulary the media deploys when a brutalized nation is freed from jail and does not immediately assume the characteristics of a Nebraska small-town school board. We’ll hear of many babies thrown out with the Ba’ath water, in other words. Today at the Pentagon press briefing, a reporter asked about Humanitarian Crisis, and Rumsfeld described at great length the humanitarian crisis that existed before the Allies got there, and how things were actually improving. It was classic Rummy; he not only refused to accept the premise of the question, he refuted it like a blacksmith working out marital frustrations on a red-hot horseshoe. You can just imagine what some of the reporters say to one another as they leave the briefing:

I say, what’s that in your hands, there? That pink thing?

Oh, this? It’s my ass. Rumsfeld handed it to me. And I see you have a nice clock there - brand new?

No, it’s quite old, but Rumsfeld cleaned it. Free of charge.

The media should poke and carp and needle the military; it’s their job. It’s instructive on many levels. But just don’t forget this day: liberation. Freedom. All of a sudden, in a day, a guy can look at a car battery without crossing his legs. It’s just a car battery now. It’s just something you curse when it dies. Bring out the satellite dishes; uncork the hooch; smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, yawp at the moon. Revel & enjoy.

I’m not stupid enough to think that we’ve just created a nation of 22 million wannabe Americans. But tonight parents can look down at their children in bed and believe they will have better lives. Not just hope for it, but believe it. Some of us call that the American Dream - hold the scare quotes, please - and we pray for the day when it’s no longer an American concept but a universal birthright.

Whatever you think we should do to get to that point, you have to admit that the sound of a cast-iron skull striking the pavement is a good way to start. And if you don’t it’s because you see some other false god on the podium, pointing at an empty heaven.

Men never seem taller than when they stand next to the prone remainders of a toppled tyrant. Someone someday will do a study of the statues the West pulled down. How they all showed a hard face to the dawn. How they all fell face first. "