Remembering What You Forgot

Mark Brown at the Chicago Sun-Times is worried that he might have ot give George Bush some credit. What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along?

Maybe you're like me and have opposed the Iraq war since before the shooting started -- not to the point of joining any peace protests, but at least letting people know where you stood.

You didn't change your mind when our troops swept quickly into Baghdad or when you saw the rabble that celebrated the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue, figuring that little had been accomplished and that the tough job still lay ahead.

Despite your misgivings, you didn't demand the troops be brought home immediately afterward, believing the United States must at least try to finish what it started to avoid even greater bloodshed. And while you cheered Saddam's capture, you couldn't help but thinking I-told-you-so in the months that followed as the violence continued to spread and the death toll mounted.

By now, you might have even voted against George Bush -- a second time -- to register your disapproval.

But after watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?

It's hard to swallow, isn't it?

Brown needn't have worried himself. There is just no need for most of the anti-war crowd to go so far.

Why is that?

Well, just because you didn't care for the approach that Bush and Co. took to Iraq you don't have to run down the power of democratic ideals. Most Democrats are good democrats. They already know that democratic ideals and principles are powerful in and of themselves. All they need to say to themselves is, in this particular situation, those ideals were so powerful that they have overcome Bush's bumbling. You can still believe that Bush wasn't terribly effective or an actual hindrance to the political future of Iraq, and you can continue to believe that even if Iraq develops in promising ways.

I guess this is my way of saying that, no matter what happens in Iraq, I'm not expecting Mark Brown to vote Republican in 2008.

No reason he should.