The big days have kept coming and now we accept, perhaps expect, them. None of us have noted another election day in Iraq – it came and went. But this is important – how important we won’t know until the next election and the next and the next. But, well, the next can’t come until the first ones do.
And a poll worker takes fire and, wounded, remains at his post; before him, the voters continue to line up, voting with more heroism than we’ve had to muster in our easy lives. The appropriate attitude should not be smug condescension but admiration for such people. (And for a policy that put that man in that polling place and the voters stretched before him.) Lex may be right–or not. Miers may prove good or bad. But Bush deserves credit for the imagination to see that this day would come in Iraq. He is not always right but clearly he doesn’t lack vision.
As I’m driving around, I hear Martha Raddatz on NPR report that the coalition expected more violence. She says they are having to go back and examine the intelligence – they must have gotten it wrong. (Frankly, I’m listening to her and wonder – is this the weirdest spin that could be put on the day?) Of course, would that they were more mistaken and none of our men had died today. Elections without American forces looking for suicide bombers will be better yet.