This was rather good

From Opinion Mill. (A blog I've always felt worthy of higher recognition.)

I'm from Missouri when it comes to Iraq, and much as I'd love for yesterday's election to be the inspiring story Dubya and his courtiers are trumpeting, I also have a more than sneaking hunch that what we've just seen might turn out to be another statue-toppling picture -- a moment of delight that later proves to be a lot less than it seemed.

Please prove me wrong, George. Please show me the neocons are right, and if you drop enough bombs on a country and stand back, the smoke will clear and the local equivalents of the Founding Fathers (powdered wigs optional) will rise from the rubble and stage their own constitutional congress. Prove to me that a war begun on a foundation of lies and manipulation can be magically transformed into an honest venture in nation-building. Convince me that the 1,600-and-counting American soldiers and 100,000-plus Iraqis didn't die for a delusional venture in geopolitics. Let me dream of a world in which a country so wracked with violence that its candidates had to campaign anonymously, and many of its voters didn't even know the purpose of the election, is actually a success story just waiting to happen. Make me believe those yellow ribbons I see everywhere aren't really blindfolds. Give me the chance to believe we won't still have troops in Iraq a decade from now, trying to keep Allawi from toppling and Iraq from becoming the Shiite theocracy that your incompetence has destined it to be.

I really don't have much else to add to that. Well written and I felt it deserved a pointer.