This post on normblog got me to thinking (as most of his posts do).

If the people of Iraq (or many American Democrats for that matter) don't believe that Iraq has been liberated, does that mean that they actually haven't been?  

Certainly, the Iraqi people have suffered horrors of war which would not have occurred had it not been for the American invasion.  But do we say that blacks weren't freed from slavery despite another hundred plus years of segregation, humiliation, lynchings and myriad other horrors?  Do we say that G-d did not release the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, despite the fact that countless millions have been murdered and tortured over the millennia?  

Iraq was indeed liberated by the United States.  However, some have confused liberation with the end of suffering.  Freedom is not a guarantee; it is a series of doors behind which opportunity, and potentially tragedy, knock.