Oh, the hell it wasn’t. What did they think Hitler was going to do, throw a party? Churchill was jumping up and down for years, trying to get people to acknowledge the obvious. It is unfortunately true that most people lack the imagination to see the big picture. Often, they freeze, hoping that if they don’t make a move, the danger will overlook them.

And, yes, one of the great benefits of promoting democracy in Iraq with integrity is that it may pay peace dividends down the line in ways unimaginable right now. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

“Last Sunday I think will quickly fall into the first category. There is an unstoppable momentum for change in the Middle East now. In just two years tyrannies have been felled in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Palestine, the inexorable clock of human mortality has ended another. But the crucial element was always going to be the voluntary and courageous act of self-assertion that democratic and free elections represent – a message heard around the region and the world.”

Wouldn’t that be just the most amazing thing? Not just because it would justify Bush’s actions or because I wouldn’t have to defend my neo-con beliefs with quite the same degree of effort: it would be wonderful because the Middle East would, ultimately, be free. A coexistence of the secular and the theological would exist, and the despots no longer able to finance the wages of war on those who believe that the two can coexist for more than just that region’s Elites. The Iraqis are showing the rest of the Arab world that they need not accept their subjugation, and the people of the Middle East would be emboldened to demand democratic freedoms.

Thank you for publishing the link to this article, Roger.

I do not believe in sending Americans to die for the sins or failings of others, but it seems to me that if the Iraqi people can actually make this work it could save lives in the future, many of them American.

My husband was offered a hugely discounted subscription to NATIONAL JOURNAL, so I told him to get it.

Yesterday I opened the most recent issue and found an article saying, published before the elections, saying that George Bush ‘now faced another election’—-that being the election in Iraq.

I’d say so!

I love this line especially:

But the crucial element was always going to be the voluntary and courageous act of self-assertion that democratic and free elections represent – a message heard around the region and the world.

Remember how much we used to hear about the ‘Arab street’?

And how often we were told, or complained ourselves, that no Muslims had stood up to condemn terror?

That silence mattered.

I know it mattered to me. I think most of us here were going on faith that the Iraqi bloggers were normal, and not miraculous. We had to go on faith, because we had no way to know.

For the first time since 9-11 we have heard from the Arab street. Or, at least, we have heard from the Iraqi street, and that’s enough.

The Iraqi people have risked their lives to condemn terror. They’ve risked their lives to embrace freedom and democracy.

That is a turning point.

The violence won’t go away. But no one can now deny that the people of Iraq reject the jihadis. Osama bin Laden & Zarqawi & Zawahiri & all the rest do not speak for the people.

We do not yet know who won on Sunday, but we know who lost.