As you note, Jennifer, Thomas Friedman argues in his New York Times column today that Iraqis, in the wake of their liberation of Basra, Amara, and Sadr City from both Mahdi Army militiamen and pro-Iranian death squads, “now have their own narrative of self-liberation.” This, in turn, has created self-confidence and legitimacy for the Maliki government and the Iraqi military. And there is, I think, a lot to Friedman’s analysis–and, it should be pointed out, it is an insight that General Petraeus has long had. It is one of the pillars of his effort to create “sustainable security” for Iraq.

There is, though, a paragraph from Friedman’s column that I wanted to take issue with:

We may one day look back on this [the success in Basra, Sadr City, and Amara] as Iraq’s real war of liberation. The one we led five years ago didn’t count.

For one thing, American troops, as John Burns of the Times has pointed out, were greeted as liberators. The problem is that shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, those sentiments evaporated as violence and disorder and a rising insurgency began to engulf Iraq.

Second, Iraq’s “real war of liberation” would have been impossible without the first war of liberation. If Operation Iraqi Freedom had not commenced, Saddam Hussein–a genocidal tyrant and the most destabilizing figure in the Middle East– would still be in power. And, once he finally left the scene, his malevolent sons Uday and Qusay would have taken the reigns of power. No subsequent steps toward liberation could have occurred in Iraq without overthrowing Saddam.

Third, the presence of the U.S. military, particularly post-surge, has allowed the breathing space for the Iraqi Security Forces to be trained well enough (by us) to spearhead the efforts in Basra, Sadr City, and elsewhere.

The war five years ago in fact did count, and it counted for quite a lot. The liberation didn’t happen all at once, and we have incurred enormous costs in terms of blood and treasure. But what the United States did a half-decade ago was noble and generous. It was, in Fouad Ajami’s phrase, “the foreigner’s gift.” And now it appears as if the people of Iraqi–so acquainted with pain and cruelty, tears and the night–have accepted the gift. They now have a chance to build, with our help, what no other Arab nation can claim to be: a stable, peaceful, and liberated country. If America turns out to be the midwife of that new Iraq, then it will one day rank among our most benevolent acts.

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