Yesterday was a day to celebrate a smooth beginning, today the statistics of war inevitably turn our emotions around as one of our own goes berzerk and commits fratricide, pictures of American dead and captured are paraded on the decadently irresponsible Iraqi state television and al Jazeera, and our casualties accumulate.

The gloom of today doesn't render the cheer of yesterday illegitimate - if anything it makes it more precious as we have to take what we can get. The administration has been very careful to warn us that while the end isn't in doubt, that there can, and most likely will, be days of sorrow between now and then. This is one such day.

Sen. John McCain reminds us why we are there in today's Washington Post:

Critics who deem war against Saddam Hussein's regime to be an unprecedented departure from our proud tradition of American internationalism disregard our history of meeting threats to our security with both military force and a commitment to revolutionary democratic change.

The union of our interests and values requires us to stay true to that commitment in Iraq. Liberating Iraqis from Hussein's tyranny is necessary but not sufficient. The true test of our power, and much of the moral basis for its use, lies not simply in ending dictatorship but in helping the Iraqi people construct a democratic future.

This is what sets us apart from empire builders: the use of our power for moral purpose. We seek to liberate, not subjugate.

"Experts" who dismiss hopes for Iraqi democracy as naive and the campaign to liberate Iraq's people as dangerously destabilizing do not explain why they believe Iraqis or Arabs are uniquely unsuited for representative government, and they betray a cultural bigotry that ill serves our interests and values. The apocalyptic vision of a Middle East inflamed by American intervention ignores the fact that the status quo bred al Qaeda and is hardly the basis for long-term stability.

....To confront the hatred that has devastated Arab progress and threatened the
United States, we should aspire to be respected by Arab peoples and, in the
case of tyrants and terrorists who threaten us, feared. Helping Iraqis
control their own destiny will demonstrate that our real allies in the
Middle East are people who yearn for freedom — not autocratic governments
that sell us cheap oil.

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