Life in post-Saddam Iraq won't be all roses - and right away we're discovering just what sorts of obstacles will be left in the rubble of the Ba'athist nightmare. Kurds are returning to lands from where they were banished years ago. Problem? Otherwise innocent Arabs had since been shuttled and planted there, part of Saddam's deranged, Nazi-like "Arabization." Not surprsingly, some Kurds are being rather brutish about their return; marking the houses of Arabs "taken" and pushing them out.

Don't hyperventilate or smugly sit back in misanthropic "We're in over our head" ecstasy. Within free societies, all disputes - even contentious or violent ones - can and will be settled. We've had our Bloody Kansases, our Italian-Irish or white-black riots; and ultimately, the parties concerned have learned to live with one another. When the heart is free to bleed, good nature prevails. And in the hearts of many free Iraqis, generosity may already be flowing:

Bamed, a grammar school teacher, said he left the house to go to the countryside during the war, returning April 14 to find it had been taken, with "girow" scrawled on the front.

Rahim, wearing the beige wool outfit of the Kurdish peshmerga warrior, said he realizes Bamed and his family might not have known that the land had belonged to someone else when they moved there 16 years ago.

"Let him come live with me," Rahim said, "side by side."

Guided and protected, Iraqis will find their way.