Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

President George W Bush's speech today to the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington will come to be seen as a defining moment in his presidency. Declaring that dictators in Iraq and Syria had "left a legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin", he deplored the "freedom deficit" in the Middle East and said the United States must remain focused on the region "for decades". Turning to Iran, he warned that "the regime in Tehran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people, or lose its last claim to legitimacy". Tough words, to be sure, but more necessary now than ever.

To the chagrin of Paris, Berlin and Moscow, and to the mortification of the quagmirists and Vietnamists, the US has dedicated 130,000 troops and 100 billion dollars to help rebuild the ruins left by a bestial dictator. The vision? "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." It's a noble and audacious plan. Especially at a time when so much cynicism and defeatism are abroad.

Beset with economic and political injustice, the Middle East has become an incubator of frustration and rage. The wretched citizens of its failed states and rogue states express their anger in anti-Americanism and terrorism against the United States in the belief that this will somehow solve their problems. It won't, but there's an antidote to the suffering and despair. Instead of the autocracy they've been subjected to for decades or the Islamic theocracy threatened by the fundamentalists, there's now a third way — democratization. Helping the region to fundamentally transform itself is the only realistic approach and we should be glad that a beginning has been made.

And, you know, it's beginning to pay off. Fawaz Turki, a columnist for the Arab News, who opposed the war, now writes:

"Is it too early to adopt a revisionist view of the US war in Iraq and for this column to admit its mistake in having vehemently opposed it from the outset?

At issue here is whether the Iraqi people have benefited from the overthrow of the Baathist regime and whether the American occupation will eventually benefit their country even more. I'm convinced — and berate me here from your patriotic bleachers, if you must — that what we have seen in the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates in recent months may turn out to be the most serendipitous event in its modern history..."

Despite what you read in the papers, Iraq is on the road to becoming a society of laws and institutions.