The freedom forces.(Shelf Life)(Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq)(Book Review)

IN Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq (St. Martin's Press, 213 pp., $24.95), Karl Zinsmeister gives us a thrilling firsthand account of the liberation of Iraq. This book, in and of itself, justifies the Pentagon's experiment with the "embedding" of reporters with combat troops. What makes Zinsmeister's writing so effective is that he doesn't allow himself to get mired in dry "we-took-the-hill-then-they-took-the-hill" military descriptions; he is always attentive to the human element in military operations. This is especially helpful to an understanding of the purpose and conduct of the Iraq war, because both have their roots in the character of the American citizen army.

The American soldier shows himself--yet again--not as a swaggering Miles Gloriosus but rather as the amiable next-door neighbor who shows himself capable of sacrifice and bravery when a cause is just. One of Zinsmeister's chapter titles refers to "the sacred profanity of war," and this captures the greatness of the ordinary person who does extraordinary things in our country's uniform. He captures, too, the speech of the troops. One soldier says his comrades are as "loose as a scrotum in an August overall." Another razzes his buddy: "I thought you was trying to kill that one prisoner, in direct violation of the Geneva Convention, when you gave him that fudge brownie without any water to drink." "Yeah," the buddy responds, "those things are tough as woodpecker lips." Zinsmeister also quotes an Army paratrooper, who writes nobly and movingly about the Iraqi people: "Once Saddam was out of power the Iraqis threw down their weapons and changed into civilian clothes and joined the cheering crowds. These people have known nothing but oppression, tyranny, and (because of Saddam's greed) poverty.... And though they worship God differently, they are faithful. We should not judge the people as a whole because of a few extremists. A true Muslim is as good as a devout Christian."

Listen to these soldiers: Theirs is not the language of mercenaries advancing the interests of a self-seeking hegemon. It is, rather, the language of good men, doing a good thing.

* Saddam Hussein was not, of course, the only tyrant desperately in need of removal. In Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 (Rowman & Littlefield, 348 pp., $27.95), Mark Palmer draws up a strategy for getting rid of the others. Formerly U.S. ambassador to Hungary and chief speechwriter for Henry Kissinger, now vice chairman of Freedom House, Palmer has written a wonderful book--a moral and intellectual tour de force.

Tyrants who care nothing for the well-being of their own people are natural allies of one another--and can be counted on to oppose America, the superpower that stands for everything they hate. Palmer points out that the trend has been in our direction: "In 1972, there were only 43 Free countries in the world; as of 2002 there were ...