Iraqis Vote in Historic Elections

Lots of link round-ups out there, but I think I'll just point you to Omar and Ali at Iraq the Model for some first-person reportage. Or just go to their main page and keep scrolling. Lots of great pics, reports from Iraqis all over the country, and, of course, purple fingers.

As of this writing, CNN.com doesn't have a single headline on the Iraq vote.

Nada.

Ace has a couple of posts, here and here, about utterly breath-taking defeatism by Juan Cole. Never heard of the guy, and apparently I haven't been missing much. The upshot of that second link is that Cole not only wants the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq, but doesn't want us to do so after being asked to by the Iraqi government. He insists that we must withdraw in defeat.

Heh. Well, Cole should be able to tell us all about how defeat feels right about now.

Finally, and observation. Remember how utterly elated conservatives were back in January, when the Iraqis voted on an interim government? Try as I might, I just can't seem to muster the same enthusiasm for today's historic election. It's the simple problem of repetition. The first election was nothing short of miraculous. The second was really neat. The third -- and every successive vote -- will be decreasingly interesting, as they get more and more typical. That people already seem to feel this tends to indicate that victory in Iraq has already been established on some subconscious level. That, combined with recent polls showing that a solid majority of Iraqis think their future looks good, makes for some satisfying news, indeed.

Unless, of course, you were rooting for failure all along.