Through a glass darkly

"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!" The words Paul Bremer, American proconsul in Iraq, spoke Sunday just may go up there with "Don't give up the ship."

Okay, so that may be hyperbole -- but they will be repeated often enough in the next few weeks that for many they will always be remembered when looking back on this in years to come. Just like the picture of the sailor kissing the woman in Times Square is a memory of V-J Day, marking the end of World War II, Bremer's statement marks the end of an era.

Military spokespeople are quick to point out that this doesn't mean an end to the low-level fighting that continues to plague coalition forces in Iraq, it just means that with Saddam out of the way those Iraqi's who may have been sitting on the fence may now lean toward a peaceful integration into what is hoped to be a peaceful Iraq's future.

The deaths of Americans won't stop there of course. It is a low-level conflict but it is still a conflict. Saddam's capture hasn't ended the conflict but it has brought that end closer. Some experts even expect there to be a temporary increase in violence.

The fact that Americans are dying in Iraq has some people upset. They don't think that any lives should be lost, no matter how noble the purpose. I've got news for them, nothing from building the Golden Gate Bridge to digging ditches has ever been achieved without the loss of life.

If I remember correctly, 13 people died during the building of the Golden Gate Bridge. Would these same people have said: "No, don't build the bridge, it isn't worth the loss of life?" Would they have said halfway through: "The bridge construction must stop, it's not worth the continuing loss of life?"

What is happening in Iraq is unusual only in that it is occurring in a part of the world that has never seen democracy. Military dictatorships are the norm in that part of the world. Iran, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, is a variation of that, a junta, a cabal, a group of wanna-be dictators, none of whom is strong enough to seize all the power so they must be content with a portion of it.

When democracy does come to Iraq it might not be an ideal of Jeffersonian democracy, but then the people of Iraq don't have the background for that. At best what they achieve will be a far cry from what you or I might think of when democracy is mentioned but it will be an advance of hundreds of years in terms of cultural development. Still, for all of that what the brave young soldiers of our and our allies armies are doing is worth the cost.

The reason it is worth the cost is simple, there is also a cost of not doing it. That cost could well be, like on that September day we will never forget, thousands of Americans dying in moments. We will never be completely safe but we are doubtless safer today because of the sacrifice of brave young American and coalition forces.

We should never forget that our celebration of Saddam's capture should always be tinged with sadness for those who made that capture possible. We should also remember that, for the most part, those who died put their lives in harms way knowingly, willingly, and gladly. They did so because there still lives in some people the certain knowledge that no country can long survive without people willing to make such sacrifices.

Let's just hope that in Iraq there live men and women such as these we humbly salute.

Let's hope that, like our forefathers, there live people willing to guide their nation with the same dedication pledging to each other, as our own Declaration of Independence stated, "to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

That would indeed mark paid to Saddam and his ilk. His once cowed subjects are now able to chart their own course without worrying that he may reappear and destroy what they have struggled so long to achieve.

For some reason, perhaps because it just aired again last week, a song from the "Wizard of Oz" started running through my mind when I heard of the capture of the most wanted man in Iraq. "Ding dong, the witch is dead. Which old witch? The wicked witch. Ding dong the wicked witch is dead."