Caroline Glick explains why what happened to today is so momentous, and such a crucial psychological blow to the enemies of freedom (registration required).

Saddam's ability to remain at large bolstered his henchmen and empowered jihadists throughout the Arab and Muslim world to the cause of defeating the US and its allies.

The psychological impact on Saddam's loyalists and on terrorists around the world of the picture of the tyrant's dirty, mired face and meek complicity during his medical examination by a US army doctor is immeasurable. Today they are forced to ask the question, "Why should we die when Saddam surrendered so abjectly?"

It has been argued that it was wrong for the Americans to show such pictures of Saddam. Doing so, it was said, will enrage jihadists who will fight all the more desperately to regain the honor lost by Saddam's humiliation.

The problem with this argument is that it fails to take common sense into account. Saddam's surrender is a signal to his allies as much as to his victims.

The folks being interviewed below are Syrian....

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20031214/D7VE8A0G1.html

> "This is a great day for the Iraqi people and I share their happiness," he said. "Saddam is a dictator and this should be the fate of all dictators."

Makhoul, however, said he was sad that Saddam should meet his fate at the hands of the Americans, whom he said "cared nothing about the Iraqi people."

Samer Saado, an employee at a Damascus flower shop, said he didn't care about Saddam but felt overwhelming sadness for Iraq and the entire Arab world.

"What the Americans are doing in Iraq and everywhere else is humiliating. There's nothing to say we're not next in line," he said.

It is humiliating only for those that identify with Saddam. Which is a good thing that could lead those people that do to reevaluate their core beliefs. This is the battle. Which makes this anticlimatic win perhaps the most significant of the war.

"It occurred to me that the only way they will wake up to the danger of Islam is when some of these towers will be pulverized like the Twin Towers in Manhattan were on September 11."

The events of the past two years have made me less optimistic. There's no getting through to some people -- "... neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead." They'll just figure out some way to blame Israel and the US for it.