Mission truly accomplished

An astonishing admittance from liberal Newsweek magazine in the feature story in the new issue to hit stands March 8.

The headline: "The Rebirth of a Nation." And the Nation they are referring to is Iraq. Newsweek writers Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Barry and Christopher Dickey even went so far as to call Bush's Iraq War success, "a watershed event," that represents a "whole new era of history."

Excerpt:

"Iraqi democracy will succeed," President George W. Bush declared in November 2003, "and that success will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation." The audience at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington answered with hearty applause. Bush went on: "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution."

Bush's rhetoric about democracy came to sound as bitterly ironic as his pumped-up appearance on an aircraft carrier a few months earlier, in front of an enormous banner that declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. And yet it has to be said and it should be understood—now, almost seven hellish years later—that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.