Americans fight and die in Iraq today not for empire, not for oil, not for a
religion, not to shock and awe the world with our astonishing power. They
fight for love — for love of freedom, our own and all humanity's. When the
guns are silent, their political leaders must take every care to advance the
aspirations that have given their sacrifice its nobility, and our country
its real glory.

How do real Iraqis feel about all this? David Ignatius is there:

There were moving scenes of grateful Iraqis waving to the American troops who had come to liberate them from Saddam Hussein. A farmer named Haider told me the American invasion was "the best celebration" he'd had since the Baath Party seized control of Iraq more than three decades ago. Two of Haider's brothers have been executed for alleged crimes against the regime, he said.

"It's a criminal regime, and they execute everyone, for one word, even," said a 14-year-old boy named Mohammed, who said one of his brothers had been executed. Asked what kind of government he wanted to see in the future, a jubilant farmer named Salem Muhsen answered: "Anything but Saddam's terrorism." Two of his cousins had been executed, he said, for the crime of traveling to Kuwait to sell their vegetables. [Washington Post]

Yet invasion and bombardment and civilian casualties also cause resentment:

Some analysts had expected Basra to be a cakewalk for the coalition, because its largely Shiite population dislikes Hussein. Basra will doubtless fall soon, but probably not in the act of anti-Hussein insurgency some American planners may have expected. The danger is that it will feel like a defeated city, rather than
a liberated one.

Will the snags in the south be repeated on a larger and more dangerous scale in the decisive battle for Baghdad? Will America's attempts to destroy Iraqi resolve instead stiffen it, as so often happens in war? America's military challenge, in the remaining days or weeks of battle, will be to avoid turning popular hatred of Hussein into anger against the "shock and awe" military colossus that has come to topple him.

That's why the political is as important as the military in this campaign.