Every generation, as it comes of age, feels a yearning for a great cause that inflames righteous political passion, a cause that directs its best energy to the achievement of something great and memorable. For the generations that fought World War I and World War II, history imposed that cause and exacted a great toll. From this yearning, and this action, has come much of the most memorable literature, poetry and music in Western cultural history.

The late 1960s were the defining moment for the generation of baby-boomers who are the dominant force in our culture, and in many ways, for the entire post-WWII era; succeeding generations have aspired to the same significance. The protests in favor of civil rights and against the Vietnam War -- and, more generally, in favor of peace and love -- created an iron template that shapes our values today.

Perhaps that explains an impulse that was evident for months before the invasion: the Vietnamization of Iraq. Many of the mass demonstrations before the war were described as festive. There was a feeling of recreating the '60s, and the hip, intoxicating power and influence of the counterculture in that decade.

By the second week of the war, when it became clear that the invasion was meeting resistance, antiwar leaders and other commentators were already warning that Iraq would become a quagmire. When Iraqis began to pull down Saddam statues a couple of weeks later, that premature concern was silenced, though only for a time. With the administration's failure to restore services and security since the fall of Baghdad, with the emergence of an elusive anti-U.S. guerrilla force and the slow but steady rise in the number of U.S. casualties, antiwar activists and others are questioning the war effort more aggressively than ever, and more effectively. The slogan "Bring the Troops Home" is an echo of those days, imposing the vernacular of the Vietnam era onto the war in Iraq.

But we must be clear on one crucial point: Iraq is not Vietnam.

Yes, there is a risk that Iraq will exact a huge cost in lives and money, as Vietnam did, and we may again find it difficult to achieve our aims and find a constructive exit. But if we see the two conflicts as morally similar, our perspective will be dangerously distorted. That diminishes the tragedy of the earlier conflict and fails to appreciate that the political character of the current conflict is altogether different. And where our perspective is distorted, so is our political response.

Vietnam was a theater of the Cold War. As part of a broad effort to check the spread of communism, the U.S. sought to suppress a popular uprising of the Vietnamese people and to impose a non-democratic government in its place. Though the Iraq war has been initiated by an administration of radical conservatives, it has had the effect of toppling a Stalinist tyrant and has, though haltingly, moved to give the Iraqis freedom and to put power in their hands. Vietnam was a war that suppressed freedom and self-determination, though fought in the name of preventing Communist tyranny; the Iraq war, whatever its motive, has had the effect of freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny.

Vietnam was backed energetically by Russia and China; Saddam's cause today is backed by virtually no one, though perhaps the hard-line ayatollahs of Iran and Islamist fascists of al-Qaida are trying to exploit the war for their own gain. The first U.S. soldier died in Vietnam in 1959, and by the time the war ended in 1975, 58,000 Americans were dead, along with 400,000 South Vietnamese and 900,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. In Iraq, as of Friday, 347 U.S. and British soldiers had died in combat and non-combat situations over the past six months; roughly 7,000 Iraqi civilians have died, along with unknown thousands of Iraqi troops.

I don't mean to diminish these casualties by saying they are fewer than those in Vietnam. No, we should regret every one of them, and grieve every one. But they should remind us that freedom often imposes a cost, and that the battle for freedom is sometimes a life-and-death struggle, a struggle that demands patience.

We forget that the birth of the United States took 13 years, from the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775, through the British surrender in 1781, to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. Without the help of the French government and the Marquis de Lafayette, the American rebels might have lost the war. And when the revolution was finally won, Lafayette penned his famous line: "Humanity has won its battle; Liberty now has a country."

Which brings us to the core of the present contradiction: A vocal bloc of the antiwar left does not see the invasion of Iraq as a liberation. It cannot. Its rage against Bush, while justified, is so powerful that it overwhelms subtlety and nuance. In such a polarized political climate, one cannot embrace the possibility of liberation without seeming to embrace Bush and Cheney. Because that latter embrace is impossible, it becomes impossible for some to strike a firm, constructive alliance with the Iraqi people.

That reflex was evident in the run-up to the war. Millions of people turned out for demonstrations in the U.S. and Europe, and though many Iraqi exiles -- including religious leaders and intellectuals -- had favored the invasion, the marchers rarely confronted the issue of human rights under Saddam. Sometimes, they were openly hostile to Iraqis on the march route who dared to question the antiwar movement. Such are the ugly dynamics of political denial: The human rights dossier conflicts with the imperative to oppose Bush, and so the dossier is, in effect, ignored.

A similar trend has unfolded since the fall of Baghdad: Though there have been many positive developments, there has been a disproportionate focus on the struggles, the failures, the breakdowns. Thus the attention paid to the now-infamous 16 words in Bush's State of the Union speech that claimed hard proof of Saddam's quest for nuclear weapons, or to the claim by the government of U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair that Saddam needed only 45 minutes to launch a WMD strike, or to the enrichment of Cheney's old posse at Halliburton.

The press, too, bears some blame for creating the distorted perspective. By focusing on the points of highest drama, the news creates an impression that Iraq is engulfed in chaos. But the impression is misleading. Iraq is the size of California; most of the attacks have occurred in the so-called Sunni Triangle, the land between Baghdad in the south, Fallujah about 35 miles to the west, and Tikrit, about 100 miles to the north. That's roughly the size of the triangle between San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Modesto, or between Manhattan, Philadelphia and Allentown, Pa. The bombing of the U.N. and other symbolic targets in Baghdad and elsewhere in the Sunni triangle have been terrible, but the rest of Iraq is relatively stable, with only scattered attacks. There have been periodic mass demonstrations against the occupying forces, but they are not daily and not widespread. Though Iraqis appear bitterly frustrated with U.S. incompetence, they have thus far given the U.S. and U.K. time to get things in order.

The left sees through many of the distortions of the mainstream press, and it would see through this one, too, if it wanted to. But that does not serve the political purpose of some blocs in the anti-Bush movement: To defeat Bush, the war must be a failure. And so the sense emanates from some quarters that the war should've been over and done in a matter of days, or weeks, and that, with sporadic fighting continuing now six months into the Iraq conflict, and with new casualties every other day, or every day, it is time to bring the troops home and to hang the shame on Bush.

This is precisely the point at which the antiwar left runs the greatest risk of losing sight of the Iraqi people. Implicit in some of the current antiwar slogans is the conclusion that Iraq would've been better off without the war. If the ultimate objective is Bush's failure, then the gains of the Iraqi people might be inconvenient and therefore discounted, consciously or subconsciously. But there have been considerable gains, and long-term liberation does remain a possibility.

The torture chambers are closed. Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's sociopathic sons and his likely successors, are dead. An Iraqi governing council has been established, and though it has yet to find traction, it can at least be said that Ahmed Chalabi, the unpopular Iraqi exile, is not the dominant force that Bush's neo-con hawks hoped he would be. A new Cabinet of 25 Iraqi officials was named this month to oversee day-to-day government services in the country. There is freedom of speech and religious freedom (both of which are being used to criticize the U.S.) There is freedom of the press. Take a look at the smart new publication Iraq Today, and you see evidence of a nation that is frustrated, fearful, angry -- and still, in spite of it all, hopeful.

"The new Iraq will be different from that of Saddam Hussein," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the Arab League this month, at his first meeting since joining the group. "The new Iraq will be based on diversity, democracy, constitution, law and respect for human rights." The other ministers must have listened with misgiving, because none of them share those values.

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