The celebration has begun – quite real in Iraq where Maliki has declared Sovereignty Day to mark the withdrawal of US forces from the cities – to bases which are often not very far from the bases they occupied just days ago – and Iraqi forces take responsibility for their country’s security.

"All of us are happy – Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds on this day," Waleed al-Bahadili said as he celebrated at the park. "The Americans harmed and insulted us too much."

For the US press and politicians, the celebration is something else indeed. In reports like that of Michael Ware for CNN in which he declares that “this will no longer be America’s war,” we hear about all the American blood spilled to bring about this day with not a single mention of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died, killed by our unnecessary and criminal invasion. A step back by US forces is not an achievement hard won by our efforts – something we’ll hear over and over in the statements from American spokesmen.

As Andrew Bacevich notes today in the Washington Post:

… by pretending that Iraqis should find tolerable levels of violence that would be deemed intolerable anywhere else, the Obama administration may yet be able to extricate the United States from a war that has failed utterly…

Sadly, President Obama’s apparent inclination to go to the mat in Afghanistan suggests that his administration has little appetite to confront and to take on board the real lessons of Iraq. It is easier or at least more expeditious to confine the search for lessons to matters of tactics and technique, as if the U.S. Army’s rediscovery of counterinsurgency doctrine has redeemed "the global war on terror," an enterprise that was unnecessary and misbegotten from the outset.

And for all the talk of this “US withdrawal,” let’s not forget that we have 130,000 troops plus who knows how many contractors in Iraq, and even if the planned withdrawal out of Iraq by August 2010 goes forward, we will keep 50,000 troops there. Sovereignty after all is an iffy thing when 130,000 foreign troops are not so far up the road.

Still, today it is good to see the Iraqi celebrations – for as one Iraqi woman told CNN:

"I feel the same way as any Iraqi feels — I will feel my freedom and liberation when I don’t see an American stopping an Iraqi on the street," said Baghdad resident Awatef Jwad.