Triumph Too Soon

Hey, Max Boot, sit down. It's only a good series of downs, not the whole game. Don't jinx us.

Max ventures close to premature end-zone dancing in Neocons May Get the Last Laugh

In 2003, more than a month before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote in the Weekly Standard that the forthcoming fall of Baghdad "may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history — events like the storming of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall — after which everything is different. If the occupation goes well (admittedly a big if), it may mark the moment when the powerful antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and began to transform the region for the better."

Don't rub anyone's face in anything yet. I know people have been throwing crap for two years at those of us who believed in the people of the Middle East. But some of those people are starting to have an epiphany. This is a "teaching moment," to steal one of their cliches.

Perhaps the greatest human virtue is the ability to choke back an "I told you so," when the turn of events give you a green light to shout it out. And we're the "virtues" party, right?

And it's not over yet.Far, far from it. Now more than ever is the time to bear down, and do what you can. Have you been to Spirit of America lately?

To steal another line from the left, Chairman Mao once said, "What we need now is a calm but enthusiastic state of mind, and intense but orderly work."