America's national gloat is, at its root, partly self-congratulation at having rid the world of an undeniably unsavory dictator. Few will weep over the departure of Saddam Hussein -- his muscle gone, his palaces rubble. Dictators have no friends.
How he was removed, however, sows the seeds of a much longer and by definition unwinnable war -- one which goes a long way toward fulfilling the bin Laden fantasy of a pan-national Islamic guerilla war against America. That conflict is also being fueled by the other part of America's gloating: the national sense that despite the unified political opposition of nearly the entire world, America can do whatever it likes, rules be damned.
[
