When the shooting stops, the crucial battle begins - the battle over the story of the war.

In the long run, the most important results of any war are the stories people tell about it. Every war produces many stories. Eventually, one story eclipses all the others. This is the official story, the one most widely accepted, the one that future generations will tell. Long after the facts are forgotten, the official story will be shaping and reshaping our history. Just think of the power the World War II story still holds.

The Bush administration tried out several stories for its war on Iraq. Its final winner, the story of "Iraqi freedom" and "liberation," worked so well because it made this war look like World War II all over again. It's a story all Americans know and feel deep in their bones:

A vile dictator, the embodiment of pure evil, terrorizes innocent people. Brave Americans risk their lives to free the innocents. Once again, America fulfills its mission: to liberate people wherever they are enslaved, to spread freedom throughout the world.

A successful war story must have a kernel of truth, as this one does. Saddam Hussein was a vile dictator who terrorized innocent people. A successful story must also be simple, as this one is. It can be fleshed out in many ways (WMD, links to terrorists, whatever), but its basic skeleton is instantly understandable. And it must make people feel good, as this one does.

In fact, this story makes so many Americans feel so good, it is hard to imagine that any other story could become the official story of the Iraq war. Trying to defeat the "liberation" story is like trying to defeat the U.S. military.

The thing is so huge and powerful, no frontal assault stands a chance.

Yet this story poses grave dangers to the world's future. It legitimates the U.S. quest for empire and paves the way to more unilateral U.S. attacks. Those of us in the peace movement, who see the danger, should not stop resisting the "liberation" story. We should not assume that it will become the official story of the Iraq war. It often takes years before a society settles on its official story.

We have only begun the struggle over the story of this war. For now, though, when frontal assault seems impossible, our only option is guerilla warfare.

We can snipe at the story from the edges. We can point out its lies and inconsistencies. If we are so devoted to freedom, why did we support Saddam for so many years? Why are we keeping such tight control over the Iraqis' political future, and their oil? Why won't we support independence for the Kurds?

However, no story is ever defeated by truth and logical analysis. You can beat a story only with a better story. So the real guerilla warfare here is to sow the seeds of alternative stories. In our months of antiwar activism, we created lots of stories. Now it is more important than ever to keep planting all of them - in the media, on the internet, in classrooms and barrooms and living rooms all over the country.

Remember, a good story must contain truth (the more the better). It must be simple. And it must make people feel good. Here are a few of the familiar alternatives we can offer. You can surely think of others:

The U.S. helps a dictator gain and keep power as long as he serves U.S. interests. When the dictator stops serving U.S. interests, the U.S. deprives him of the weapons the U.S. had furnished, and then destroys his government, depriving him of power. The U.S. then installs another hand-picked ruler in the same country. It is obvious to people everywhere (except in the U.S.) that the aim of this policy is to continue U.S. domination of that oil-rich country.

The U.S. weakens a nation with six weeks of bombing and twelve years of sanctions. Then it invades and takes over the country, arranges a new government for its victim, says it will leave at some unspecified time in the future, and calls this "liberation." Such arrogance and hypocrisy foster anger and resentment against the U.S. around the world.

The U.S. government makes a series of unproven claims to justify invading a country that has never attacked the U.S. When foreign nations ask for evidence to support these claims, the U.S. government turns public opinion against these foreign nations and accuses them of aiding and abetting a dictator. This lets the government continue basing its foreign policy on lies and deception.

The U.S. government throws a major Middle East country, with the world's second largest oil reserves, into political and economic chaos. The government has no clear idea what the outcome will be and no clear plan to deal with the contingencies. It risks sparking much more anti-American sentiment in Arab and Muslim communities. It risks playing havoc with the world's oil-based economy. Yet the government denies any responsibility for its reckless behavior.

The U.S. government finally admits that it is determined to remain, forever, the world's leading military power. It declares its right to destroy any nation it thinks might threaten its military dominance. To demonstrate that it will act on this principle, it invades a country with virtually no military capability and destroys that country's military in just three weeks. The goal is to show all other nations what they face if they question the U.S. right to military preeminence. This actually encourages other nations to build up their own military strength, to resist the U.S. bid for omnipotence.

All these stories can be easily understood. All contain more than a kernel of truth. Could they make people feel good? If we tell them to prove the wickedness of America, they will not make most Americans feel good, and they have no chance of becoming the official story.

So we should give our stories the same simple moral as the "official story" of the Vietnam war: This war does not reflect our true national values or aspirations. We are really decent people. We all want the U.S. to be the very best nation it can be. Sometimes we make a mistake. When we do, we admit it, learn from our mistake, and resolve to do better in the future. The very fact that we tell this story proves that we want to, and can, do the right thing.

The more such stories we tell about the Iraq war, and the more often we tell them in the right way, the more we undermine the power of the "liberation" story. Once the shooting stops, and the battle for the official story begins, let a thousand stories bloom.

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder chernus@colorado.edu

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