Of Iraqi Beginnings and Endings...

How can you not read an article that begins this way?

There's only one thing you can say about the elections in Iraq: They are either going to be the end of the beginning there or the beginning of the end. Either Iraqis turn out in large numbers to take control of their own future and write their own constitution - and I think they will - or the fascist insurgents there prevent them from doing so, in which case the Bush team will have to move to Plan B. What's sad is that right when we have reached crunch time in Iraq, the West is totally divided. All that the Europeans care about is being able to say to George Bush, "We told you so." What happens the morning after "We told you so" ? Well, the Europeans don't have a Plan B either.

I think perhaps the world is finally coming to realize that the failure of Iraq would be equivilent of the failure of Western ideals. I was watching a piece on The History Channel last night on the French Revolution. Isn't it amazing that the very ideals that the Revolutionaries fought for - equality of all men, freedom, self-rule - are exactly the ideals that the modern French Republic would claim Iraqis can not have?