The Old Life Is Dead

Operation Iraqi Freedom is named because it is believed that we are freeing the Iraqi people from one way of life in order that they might experience another way of life. It is believed that only by our continued existence here can they improve their life to something that we believe it should be and that many of them even hope it will be, but the longer we stay, the more we subject them to rules that are designed to control them, and even the more some Iraqis subject their countrymen to new rules and laws in the hope that they will succumb to the realization that the "freedom" of democracy, or perhaps some other form of government is much better than any other and the hope that they will at some point begin to act the way we want them to so that they can finally "be free".

The truth is that they are already freed from Saddam. Not, only when the last vestiges of all that remains of his government is hunted down and captured, or killed, and they finally begin to have a democratic form of government, but right now--he no longer has rule over them. That old life is dead and even if what exists afterwards seems to resemble it, the truth is real; it is gone.