The Second Iraq War recedes now in the rearview mirror.

As the United States seeks to turn on the lights, secure the place and move Iraqis toward democracy, the critics - ever the critics - are out there carping that liberal democracy won't work, can't work, won't ever work and certainly not if the discreet Iraqi people discern the United States has anything to do with it. These are, of course, many of the same critics who sought to prevent the Coalition military onslaught from working to remove Saddam.

These also are many of the same critics who, let's see: (1) oddly overlook the low regard Islam tends to have not only for democracy but for women and for non-Koranic law, (2) continue (with most of the Middle East's non-democratic Arab/Muslim regimes) to hammer the United States to leave Iraq soon and to leave Syria alone, and (3) gravely groan that if we don't find nasty weapons and if we don't find Saddam dead, then the war (as with the war in Afghanistan without the body of Osama bin Laden) will not have been justified. These many critics' implicit logic seems to argue that Iraq would be a better place with the Saddamite regime still there. Perhaps they drift to sleep each night wishing we had for a president not the incumbent but Al Gore.

Generally, much goes well. Yes, there has been evident American assistance (from troops and pressies alike) in ripping off Iraqi historic and artistic treasure. Yes, tension persists among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds - and between Islam and democracy. But: We're rounding up many terrorists and regime big boys, we're learning about what may have happened to the WMDs, and we're hearing repeated stories of the routine intimidation and torture whereby Saddam kept his people cowering in fear.