Finally! The long-awaited scenes of mass euphoria materialized in Iraq last week, with hundreds of thousands of delirious Iraqis filling the streets.

But hold it. Something isn’t quite right with the image. What are those guys doing? Don’t they know they’re supposed to be celebrating their liberation, waving American flags, kissing marines? Instead they’re beating themselves with sticks, doing some weird Islamic thing. This wasn’t in the original script.

Certainly, this doesn’t appear to be the secular, pro-western Iraq that had been on the drawing boards, so there may have to be some adjustments before “democracy” is possible.

With the Bush administration now all but admitting it made a mistake about weapons of mass destruction, claims that this war was necessary to depose a brutal tyrant and hand Iraq back to the people have become all the more forceful — and all the less convincing.

It’s generally assumed that there’s simply no other way to overthrow dictators so, if we care about eliminating tyranny, we should be willing to excuse a little U.S. unilateralism, even accept it as an appropriate model for the future.

But is U.S. intervention really the only method of toppling dictators?

U.S. critic Noam Chomsky points out that other equally brutal and all-powerful dictators — such as Marcos, Duvalier, Ceausescu, Mobutu, Suharto — were overthrown by their own people.

Such popular uprisings are enormously difficult to pull off. But they do sometimes succeed. Ironically, one of the key obstacles is often U.S. support for the dictator. Chomsky notes that all the above-mentioned dictators enjoyed U.S. support, making the task of overthrowing them more difficult.

Brutal Middle-Eastern regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt — often derided as examples of how undemocratic that part of the world is — would fall pretty quickly to popular uprisings if U.S. support were withdrawn.

So perhaps the appropriate anti-tyranny model for the future is something far more radical: leaving dictators to be toppled by their own people. There might be some situations where outsiders legitimately provide support, but the biggest help Washington could likely offer would be to stop supporting tyrants in the first place. That would really help.

For that matter, U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s undoubtedly made it harder for his own people to rise up against him. His regime had been weakened by years of fighting an unpopular war against Iran. Washington’s support — captured in the memorable photo of Donald Rumsfeld on a goodwill visit to Saddam — helped Saddam win that war and strengthen his internal hold on power.

Interestingly, when the Shiites rebelled against Saddam in March, 1991, right after the first Gulf War, the U.S. declined to help, even refusing to allow them to use captured Iraqi military equipment to defend themselves against Saddam’s retaliation.

Why didn’t the U.S. help? Some argue that George Bush senior, who was president at the time, lacked the tough resolve of his son, the current president.

But Chomsky offers a different interpretation. “The (Shiite) uprising would have left the country in the hands of Iraqis who might not have subordinated themselves sufficiently to Washington.”

By contrast, last month’s war of “liberation” has left no uncertainty about subordination to Washington.

“The coalition alone retains absolute authority within Iraq,” said a proclamation issued last week by U.S. Lt.-Gen. David McKieman, warning Iraqi politicians that challenging the U.S.-led authority could lead to arrest. Or, as another general put it to a meeting of Baghdad railway officials: “If we say you run the railroad, you run the railroad.”

So, even with Saddam gone, it’s not clear the Iraqi people will end up running their own country. All we’ve seen so far is a U.S. occupation and vague U.S. promises to leave at some unspecified point.

And, according to reports last week, even when the interim U.S. administration departs, Washington plans to leave behind four U.S. military bases, which suggests any future regime will govern Iraq at the pleasure of the U.S. government.

Oddly, Washington even denies that what it’s doing amounts to an occupation. How can it be an occupation when it feels so natural? How can it be wrong when it feels so right?

The U.S. no longer even seems to regard itself as a foreign presence in Iraq, let alone an unwanted one.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer criticized Iran last week for allegedly interfering in the affairs of its next-door neighbour. “We oppose any outside interference in Iraq,” said Fleischer, apparently unaware that large numbers of U.S. troops were not actually born in Iraq.

Why, that’s not the U.S. army over there, that’s just plain folks.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...