9 April 2008/Camp Ramadi, Ar Ramadi, Al Anbar, Iraq

Today is a national holiday.  Not a U.S. holiday, but an Iraqi holiday.  It has nothing to do with the birth, death, epiphany, what-have-you of any imam, caliph, prophet or president.

Today is the official 5th anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to Coalition Forces, and the elected Iraqi government declared it a national holiday.  Frankly, it caught me by surprise... but then I probably wasn't reading enough of the traffic.

This morning I was speaking with an Iraqi National.  When the matter of the fall of Baghdad came up, he told me that it was a very significant day for him: it was the day the nightmares stopped.  For him, his family, and everyone he knew.  Not the notional concept of a national nightmare (like the 400 days of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, or a Hillary presidency, or something like that), but real, literal nightmares.  The cold sweat, sitting up shaking in the middle of the night, moans of terror kind of nightmares.  The things that make you wake up tired.  He said that that night, the night after Baghdad was taken, he slept soundly for the first time that he could remember.  Not concerned that a jealous neighbor might have reported him as a spy or traitor, not worried that his daughter might be late because Uday or Qusay or some other Ba'ath party leader might have taken a shine to her and she was currently somewhere in the process of being kidnapped, raped, tortured, killed, and dumped.  Sure things were dangerous... but that is, while not 'normal,' a matter of risk management and perhaps insh'allah... what can you do if god so wills it?  But the deep terror of not god, but a malign dictator, a very human force that prided himself on having modeled his society on Stalin's... that terror was gone.  No illusion of everything being perfect when the sun rose, but now a manageable future.

No, stopping nightmares wasn't one of the stated reasons for invading Iraq.  Our national interest is not directly served, perhaps, by letting Iraqis sleep sounder (before somebody trots out John Kerry's hoary old description of our security activities here, I will simply say that to compare a Coalition 'cordon and knock' sweep into a house with Saddam's secret police dragging a father off to have his feet flogged is as fatuous as equating Guantanamo with Auschwitz).  But I suppose, from time to time, the law of unintended consequences comes down on the plus side, too.  And KNOWING that it stopped the nightmares of a few dozen million folks, I'd be hard pressed to realpolitik my way into justifying NOT kicking in the door.  But perhaps I'm growing soft, and losing my cynical edge.  I guess hearing stories like that'll do it to you.

Just my thoughts on 9 April 2008.  Take care all.  Sleep well.