You've got to love Iraq the Model

Here and Here



They are talking about elected representatives writing a constitution!



Freedom of speech! Freedom of the press!

Women's rights in the heart of the old Caliphate!

People buying into a democratic political process as the way decisions are made!



All in a part of the world that has never had a tradition of any of those things!



I do not understand how people can be blase about this.



It may not be Philadelphia 1787 where there was nothing of the sort - no democracies or republics anywhere in the world, and there had been none for two millenia, but we are seeing a country that has put itself on the path to where we are today.



As much as I love the United States, I am too much of a student of history to believe we will last forever as a country. Given the state of the world, we may change into something else peacefully and of our own free will, but eventually we will no longer be the United States of America.



And that will be a sad day. Perhaps the saddest this world has ever known.



But things like this will give us a legacy to generations hundreds or thousands of years in the future, that will never know the United States except through the history books. People who, I hope, regard a democratic political process as something normal, natural, and universal. "Of course we do it that way." People who will know only through the history books that things were not always thus.



When you look back on the great empires of history, what did they bring? Engineering, Art, Culture, order. All of them worthwhile. Most of them gone when the empire retreated.



We're bringing these people an idea as to how governments should work - about how decisions should be made, and the process for making the decisions, and for who gets to decide, and what limits are placed upon their ability to decide.



All in a part of the world where the tyrant has held unfettered sway, and if you managed to translate and explain "the rights of the people" the best reaction you could hope for would be laughter, as if they took you seriously Steps Would Be Taken to make certain this Dangerous Lunatic's Heresy got no further.



We're going to be with the Iraqis a long time if things go right. But I think that even if a "cut our losses and run" candidate manages to win the presidency in 2008, the Iraqi people will have had enough of a taste of this heady thing called "Managing your own affairs" to decide that they like it and intend to keep it.



Barring outside conquest, they're coming along with us. And setting an entire country on that path is something I believe worth every last iota of the investment we and the members of our armed services have made.