It is still possible to hate the war, but to give thanks for regime change

Even now, as the troops move softly into Baghdad, the humanitarian cost of this invasion remains incalculable

Among the jumble of justifications, aims and excuses, surely one outcome can be looked upon by everyone, pro-war and anti-war, with some satisfaction. As US troops wander the presidential palaces or Baghdad airport's VIP lounge, as evidence of Saddam's torture and terror is uncovered and as men approach checkpoints saying they have been forced into becoming human bombs, who doubts that the ousting of this vile leadership is in itself a decent thing?

Certainly, many Iraqis seem keen enough on the idea of Saddam's imminent collapse. Some have requested that statues of Saddam be destroyed. Others are becoming bold in reassuring British and American soldiers that they appreciate what is being done in their name. Some go further, and tip off the invaders as to where the common enemy can be found.

Iraq may fear for the future, and many around the world fear with them. But for a frozen moment, free from the bloody past, severed from the dangerous times to come, there is a war dividend. Here is a pause of sorts, in which it is possible still to hate the war, but to give thanks for its one unarguably fine outcome.

The paradox is that having gone into Iraq for reasons of national security, the US has become more comfortable justifying the war on the grounds of regime change. Yet still the US government remains instinctively unilateralist, uninterested in entering into dialogue about how the international community can deal with despotic rulers more broadly.

All that lies ahead. Saddam is not yet quite gone, and so the consequences of his removal have not yet swept Iraq, the US and the world. But he is far more impotent than the Iraqi people know. They fight on because they do not understand the battle is already lost and that the continued sacrifice of life and limb itself is one of their twisted old leader's final merciless cruelties. Heaven knows what anger and chaos will be unleashed at the moment of Saddam's passing. But for now, realisation that this moment is nigh is arriving slowly, the reaction to it tentative, and almost, despite the still-raging battle, gentle.

Perhaps, as Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, says, the Iraqi mothers of children killed by cluster bombs may "one day" thank the Allies. I'd say instead that in a curious way, we are now approaching the high water mark of the invasion's moral force. In the next few weeks the US and Britain are likely to receive as much thanks from the liberated people of Iraq as they will ever get.

The "battle for hearts and minds" must end when the battle does. Above all, as the regime collapses, Iraqis will be sickened by the propaganda they have been fed, and suspicious of propaganda that may be fed to them in the future. What the people of this country need now is the space to make up their own minds, and follow their own hearts, instead of the assault on these organs moving from the physical and psychological to the purely psychological.

When the war ends, it is important that Iraqi civil society is given time and space to make its own evaluation of what has been done, and whether the Iraqi people would have chosen it had they been able to. The US-UK forces should take all the help from other countries they can get in maintaining the order necessary for this process.

It is important, too, that the international community listen to the conclusions of the Iraqi people. Much can be learned from such an action, as long as the US-UK leaders don't persist with their belief that they know all the answers already.

In order to get rid of Saddam, the US and British leaders have made some truly momentous decisions on the behalf of the Iraqi people, without international agreement, and without even a moral template that they can honestly say will be pertinent in dealing with other cruel dictators.

Mr Hoon might have been pilloried for suggesting that Iraqi parents could at some point feel gratitude that their children have been killed. But all he did was to answer a question that personalised a calculation that everyone who supports the war has agreed with – that the lives lost in getting rid of Saddam are lives worth losing.

Yesterday, in another of the shocking photographs that the Western media pumps out with impunity – as long as the victim is Iraqi – introduced us to 12-year-old Ali Ismail Abbas. He has lost all of his family in the bombing of Baghdad, and he has also lost his arms. He lies in a hospital under an iron cage, there to protect his burnt torso from the painful pressure that bedclothes would inflict.

This little boy is one of more than 5,000 Iraqi injured, while his parents and his brother are among more than 1,000 who are dead. It is not impossible that he will grow up optimistic and proud, accepting of the price he had to pay for the liberation of his country. Some human beings are wonderfully resilient and forgiving, while others are not.

But still, this was a judgement that many felt they were unable to make on his behalf. For a lot of people opposing the war, this is the problem. There is a difficulty with deciding that other, unknown, unnamed people ought to be prepared to die or be maimed for what may or may not turn out to be the greater good.

Iraqi exiles have been highly instrumental in persuading Tony Blair that they have the authority to speak for these people, and it can only be hoped that they are right. But at the same time, there should be no shame for those who do not feel it is their place to support political decisions that decree that innocent people will die for the sake of their own liberation.

Even the most stalwart among those opposed to war must admit that there has been plenty of evidence that this one has been carried out with unprecedented sensitivity. The British troops who decided to gain trust in southern towns by abandoning their helmets and patrolling the streets with their heads as vulnerable to fire as the people they wished to liberate were magnificent. The civilian toll the bombing has taken has been slender in comparison with the amount of hardware deployed.

But even bearing this in mind, the cost of war has been bitter. Even now, as troops move softly into Baghdad, the humanitarian cost of the invasion remains incalculable. The worry now is that the encirclement of cities, with incursions designed to exact a psychological toll, and the threat of capture "at a time of our choosing", is as damaging to a civilian population without many daily resources as a more aggressive attack might be. More imponderables among all the imponderables that have turned out, for the American and British leadership, to be simple, black and white, decisions.

d.orr@independent.co.uk