What America Has Accomplished in Iraq

What the US has accomplished in the Middle East should not be completely obscured by reaction to the Iraq Study Group's report. Most importantly, the overpowering military response to terrorism has painted in bold strokes the clear consequences for foreign leaders who would provide refuge to terrorists, and has proved Americans anything but the paper tigers or passive victims some would have us be.

And because of us, those news photos of enfranchised grandmothers standing before ballot boxes with proudly purpled thumbs are now forever part of Muslim consciousness, and will rise to confront any who seek a return to the past in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. Neither Islam's anti-democratic elements nor others elsewhere who rail reflexively against America will ever efface such images.

Minority Sunni dominance in Iraq is gone forever. That Iraqis now struggle to put an "Iraqi face" on the democracy our resolve has birthed perhaps isn't as incongruous as it presently appears: Isn't accompanying factional strife the norm rather than the exception for emerging democracies? And doesn't Kurdistan already stand out as a success story?

All this has registered powerfully on the Arab street, even as policy critics choose but to despair.