More on the "impolitic" freedom of Iraqis:

Certainly Iraqis don't see the "resistance" in such a sentimental light. Public opinion of the fedayeen and Mafia-like crime lords in the Sunni Triangle ranges from anger to contempt. "Sixty percent of the Sunnis are criminal followers of Saddam Hussein," asserts Farman Hamid, director of the Office of Human Rights in Kirkuk. "They create problems in Iraq because they have no door to the future." Argues Basran shopowner Ghattan Mohammad, "This resistance' does not fight for Iraq, only for itself."

Even in prickly Baghdad, you find similar reactions. "We keep telling the Sunnis that they are not serving their people by attacking U.S. soldiers — Iraq's future lies with America," says Abdul Mashtaq, a director of the Iraqi Human Rights Organization. "We are proud to help the Americans in the Sunni Triangle," proclaims sheik Ali Nsayief, of the Baghdad Council of Confederated Tribes. "What kind of resistance' kills seven civilians for every U.S. soldier, then sabotages our electricity?" asks Samir Adil, head of the Worker's Communist Party. "Ninety-five percent of Iraqis do not believe in this 'resistance.'"

Which is striking, as any review of news headlines or photographic diaries from, say, National Geographic before the war showed Iraqi citizens mimicking Islamist terrorists, ready to die as masked martyrs for one glorious thug or another. City gents with pillowcases over their heads, children with plush AK-47s. They didn't show up to fight in March and April of 2003. And given a choice - the freedom of expression - Iraqis have overwhelmingly rejected terrorism of all kinds. We see that those prewar images were as fabricated as the left's dire predictions of humanitarian disaster. Given time, the Iraqis' anger will coalesce into a violent resolve against authoritarians; we're already hearing about it from the progressives. And where is the left? Playing make-believe, defending dying world views, pretending that Iraq's expulsion of ideologies of hatred and violence has made terrorism "infinitely more powerful." An entire country has been freed after decades of despotic torment, ready to expel their former oppressors and assume the enemy of free humanity, dictators and terrorists. And the left calls it a "disaster." Free people, allies - disaster? That's the left for us: intellectual pride first, human dignity a distant second.

STILL GOOD ON FOREIGN POLICY: Andrew Sullivan takes a snapshot of the left's only response to mortal danger: snooty, empty jargon.