As I pointed out a number of months ago, it took us seven years before we handed Japan--a nation with no tradition of democracy--back to its people with a democratic government that is still running well. I expected Iraq to take a long time too, and thought Bush was jumping the gun with the June 30 transfer of power. On the other hand, nobody in Japan was still shooting at us (of course, this was back when we would have bombed a rebel village into rubble in five minutes, and there were still parts of Japan that were radioactive. This tends to go a long way toward pacifying rebellion), and thousands of people in the United States in 1946 were not screaming about why we were still in Japan after six whole months.

The former Soviet Union is still struggling with the fall of communism. Bosnia/Kosovo is having a very hard time right now, although this is studiously ignored by the media. The history of the United States and democracy has not been that smooth either. How long was it before women and blacks got to vote?

Iraqis can handle a democracy as well as any other people can. I do not think there are any races or cultures on Earth that I know of that do not have democracy (or at least a society reasonably tolerant of freedom) in some country, or somewhere in their history. Conversely, every race and culture also has tyranny somewhere in their history.

We have made a lot of progress in Iraq in many areas and at many levels. We are being shot at in about a dozen places out of the hundreds of cities and villages in Iraq. Some places, like Kurdistan, are almost completely safe. There is power, oil being pumped, a new reasonably stable currency, a baby constitution, and plans for elections.

This could still work, but there are a lot of people who really, really don't want it to. While most are in Arab nations, not all of them are.