VDH does it again

I never cease to be thrilled by Victor Davis Hanson's prose. His keen intellect and his sharp ripostes never cease to pierce the heart of the matter. And so it is today, as he reminds us of what was promised and what became, of what was feared and what has been achieved. To quote only one paragraph does not do him justice, but so I will, that you might be compelled to read it whole.

Yet despite them all, and after this bloody month of November, here we are now on the eve of elections -- the most unlikely of all events in the last half-century of civilization. Just think of it: In place of the past Hussein mass murdering and the present ogres of Fallujah, we are to witness an effort to jump-start democracy in the heart of the caliphate of old, right between the world's worst two governments in Syria and Iran, amid treacherous folk like the Saudis, Jordanians, and al Jazeera cheering the insurgents on. How did we come this far and get so close, when the unprincipled such as Jacques Chirac shunned the once-wounded democrat Allawi and sent his plane instead to fetch the murderer Arafat -- a profiteer in the guise of a 'leader' who hand-in-glove with Saddam Hussein made France billions in Iraq and then lectured about morality to those who slammed the cash register drawer on his stealthy hands. How could we ever contemplate the chance of elections when the Saudis, the Syrians, and the Iranians sent millions of dollars and thousands of jihadists to stop it all -- lest the virus of freedom spread?

If reading were a meal, Hanson is a banquet.

The table is set. You need only partake.