A RUMSFELD ANSWER at a press conference revealed an easy-to-fix yet important problem with the administration’s view of the war.
No cheering crowds greeted American forces entering Germany in 1945. Unquestionably the Americans did arrive as liberators. But having your own country liberated can be drastically different (psychologically, emotionally) from the sort of liberation that removes a foreign occupier. When you are under attack, the normal human reaction is to rally round. And of course many Germans loved Hitler despite hating him; their moral compasses were bent and took months, years or forever to straighten out. Cheering crowds might greet us in Baghdad. But even if they do, there is more to this story than freedom and the American army.
