They are voting in Iraq as I write this (it’s 8:30 am their time), and I’m surprised at how excited I am about it. You’d think that it would have become routine – the notion of a change in power in the Middle East that didn’t involve dungeons, gallows or the firing squad – after the first ones.

We in the West have certainly participated in enough of those kinds of changes of power over there; to me, this one begins the process of wiping the slate clean.

Go read some Iraqi blogs tonight and tomorrow. Start with my friends at Iraq The Model.

Especially this post.

Building a free country takes a long time. You do it one brick at a time.