Iraq election

Fire of Liberty
Gerard Baker of The Times has written a wonderful article arguing that the Iraqi election will be a historic event on par with the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Here's two paragraphs that caught my eye.

If he had announced on Wednesday that he was replacing Donald Rumsfeld with Michael Moore, converting to Islam and seeking permission for the US to join the European Union, the headshaking verdict from the European cognoscenti and the American elite would have been the same: bad, dangerous, foolish man on a religious mission to destroy the world.

Sometimes moments of truly historic significance are almost instantly recognisable for what they are. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 proclaimed its universal importance right from the start. No one needed to be told that the fall of the Berlin Wall was going to change history. With others the consequences creep up on us slowly, even surreptitiously. Some wise heads see the significance; others resist it or are blind to it. It was not immediately necessarily evident that Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933 would lead to the unrelenting tragedy that unfolded for Europe and the world over the next decade. We all know better now.