We have a job of work ahead of us, transforming a corrupt region. But we should soberly appreciate small victories that are true victories.

A friend of mine put it this way:

“‘I’d like to honor our brave men and women in uniform pursuing the noble cause of making the Iraq of tomorrow only as despotic and depressing as the Tunisia of today’ doesn’t sound like Peggy Noonan’s Greatest Hits. But transforming Iraq into a place as non-awful as Tunisia would be a major, major accomplishment.”