Astonishing

If an astonishing thing happens, and no one is there to witness it, is it astonishing?

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Iraq, as ancient Mesopotamia (the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers), seeded Abraham's Ur and Hammurabi's Babylon. The region was the Eden of city-states, the consolidator and exporter of the Agricultural Revolution. It is also the center of a predominantly Muslim region where -- to paraphrase historian Bernard Lewis -- something "went wrong." Lewis was addressing the "fossilization" that began to afflict the Middle East at least six centuries ago, a cultural, intellectual and, yes, political ossification and decline.

The decline did two things that directly affect the War on Terror (which Rudy Giuliani more correctly calls The Terrorists' War Against Us). The decline undermined Islamist utopian notions of theological supremacy. That millennialist disappointment seeds the long list of "grievances" infesting al-Qaida's propaganda.

The far greater consequence (and truly grievous wrong) was arresting Middle Eastern populations. Arrest is the right word. The Middle East was trapped in the terrible yin-yang of tyrant and terrorist, the choice of one or the other -- which is no choice, for both mean oppression and death.

In November 2001, I wrote that we -- the United States specifically, but the civilized world as a whole -- are in a "fight for the future" with terrorists and tyrants. Iraq (Mesopotamia) has been and continues to be an influential if not critical stretch of geography.

In January 2003, I argued that toppling Saddam's tyranny in Iraq would do two things: begin the process of fostering political choice (democracy) in the Middle East and bring al-Qaida onto a battlefield not of its choosing. Moreover, that battlefield would be largely manned by Muslim allies, exposing the great fractures within Islam and the Middle East that al-Qaida's strategists tried to mask by portraying America as "the enemy."

Credit the Iraqi people with taking the opportunity by conducting three honest, open, democratic elections. In May 2006, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki formed a democratically elected, consensus-seeking government not simply in Mesopotamia but in the heart of the politically dysfunctional Middle East.

That's an astonishing achievement.

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When I read this it feels like when you tell a good joke and the person doesn't budge at the punchline. What is it that they don't get? It's pretty straight forward to me.