Freedom is the right cause.(What's Next in Iraq?)

If one concept has guided the Bush administration since September 11, it is that the Middle East as a whole is so dangerous because abysmal tyranny prevails and freedom languishes. While undertaken partly for self-defense, the war in Iraq is thus ultimately based, more than any other struggle since World War II, on America's core values: an individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

As straightforward and traditionally American as a war for freedom may seem, it is a revolutionary break from the way the Middle East has long been approached by the foreign policy establishment, especially on the Left. Most diplomats and academic experts opposed the war. They expected the Iraqi people to resent us as occupiers, not regard us as liberators. They doubt that all men share the desire to be free, or that most are capable of understanding freedom. According to this perspective, modern Arab politics are so deeply rooted in a hatred of America and everything it represents that Arabs identify democracy as a colonial assault. Arabs, in other words, would rather be oppressed by fellow Arabs than freed by Americans.

The differing views of the administration and its critics are irreconcilable. One is right. The other is wrong.

American soldiers were not greeted in the streets of Baghdad with flowers, opponents of the war state today. This is seen as proof that the administration was wrong in assuming that the Iraqi people would delight in their new freedom. The TAE poll, however, tells a different tale. It demonstrates that Arabs, like all other men, do indeed wish to be free.

A plurality of Iraqis believe the new Iraqi government should be modeled after the American government, and nearly 40 percent of those polled already think that democracy can work in Iraq. Iraqis are now optimistic about their future. These things suggest that, despite some anti-American sentiments, the majority of Iraqis will indeed view us as liberators, eventually.

These sorts of findings shatter the ...