jim submits:

"What Does the Felling of the Monument Mean?"

Jürgen Habermas

Let us not close our eyes before this revolution in world affairs: the
normative authority of America lies shattered

1 The whole world watched that scene on the 9th of April in Baghdad,
followed the American soldiers placing the noose around the neck of
the dictator, watched the tyrant being felled from his pedestal in a
most symbolic act, before a jubilant crowd. First the apparently
immutable monument wobbles, then it falls. Before it crashes
liberatingly to the ground, gravity has to overcome the grotesquely
unnatural horizontal position in which the massive figure, gently
see-sawing up and down, is poised for one last disturbing second.