Good news from Iraq

Iraq is still a bloody disaster, but the good news is that it was only a normally awful day there yesterday in terms of bloodshed, and the election itself seems to have gone off better than most (including me) expected. It's certainly a hopeful moment, in that it could have been much worse. Without arguing the merits of the American invasion itself, it would be hard to dispute that yesterday was as good a day as the Iraqi people have had in a very long time.

The hard part is what comes next: the constitutional convention to determine how Iraq's people are to govern themselves. Civil war still strikes me as more likely than not -- in fact, arguably, it has already begun. One need not dispute the merits of democracy to wonder where the U.S.'s de facto sponsorship of a Shiite redeemers' movement will lead. There are a good Realpolitik reasons why the Bush's original plans called for a much more tentative form of democracy for Iraq....