Point taken

Charles Krauthammer turns our focus to Afghanistan and points out the astonishing transformation that has taken place in a land in which nobody thought we could possibly succeed - except for President Bush, of course.

In the 1990s, Afghanistan was allowed to fall to the Taliban and become the global center for the training, indoctrination and seeding of jihadists around the world -- including the mass murderers of Sept. 11, 2001. This week, just three years after a two-month war that destroyed the Taliban, Afghanistan completed its first free election, choosing as president a pro-American democrat enjoying legitimacy and wide popular support.

This represents the single most astonishing geopolitical transformation of the past four years. (Deposing Saddam Hussein ranks second. The global jihad against America was no transformation at all: It existed long before the Bush administration. We'd simply ignored al Qaeda's declaration of war.) But perhaps even more astonishing is how this singular American victory has disappeared from public consciousness.

No matter what you think of Iraq, you are forced to admit that Afghanistan is an unqualified success.

Is the same President who lead this brilliantly conceived plan that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams the supposedly incompetent nincompoop that John Kerry so gleefully remonstrates? Iraq is and was much more difficult than Afghanistan. Remember, there was already an armed opposition to the Taliban - an ongoing civil war that was stalemated. All we had to do was tip the balances in favor of the Northern Alliance.

Iraq had a standing army, a determined leader and thousands of fanatically loyal Fedayeen. Yet it took only three weeks to get to Baghdad, and here we are 18 months later, on the cusp of free elections for the first time in their history and about to destroy the last remnants of the terrorists. By any reasonable measure, we have done unbelieveably better than could have been predicted or was expected. (Remember the concerns that we might lose 10,000 troops taking Baghdad?)

Have there been mistakes? Of course there have. This is, after all, a human endeavor involving huge bureaucracies (Pentagon, State Department, et. al.) If you step back and dispassionately look at what's been achieved so far, it takes your breath away. Would anybody have predicted, in 2000, that just four years later the Taliban would be ousted, Afghanistan would have elected a democratic President, Sadaam would be in jail, his sons dead and Iraqis yearning to cast their ballots in their own democractic elections? Absolutely not! Yet all of this is done.

There is much more to do, of course, but shouldn't the man who led this effort, who approved the plans and allowed the professionals to do what they do best, get the credit?

Shouldn't that credit be your vote at the ballot box?