It is one thing for the Shi'ite majority in Iraq to want to be free and something very different to expect them to want -- or even tolerate -- the consequences of that country's Sunnis or Kurds being free. An enduring democracy requires tolerance and it is hard to think of any place more intolerant than the Middle East.
Some blame the Islamic religion for narrow and backward features of many Moslem countries. Yet there are Moslem countries which have had women as heads of state, which the United States has not yet had. But these were not Arab countries in the Middle East.
Islam cannot be blamed for everything that has gone wrong in Islamic countries, any more than Christianity can be blamed for everything that has gone wrong in Christian countries. Middle Eastern civilizations existed for centuries, and developed their own distinctive character, before the rise of Islam.
Indeed, some of the oldest civilizations in the world arose in the Middle East, at a time when much of Europe consisted of illiterate tribal societies. The loss of their historic prominence during the past few centuries, and their large and painfully visible lags behind the West today, is one of the humiliations poisoning the Middle East.
Such humiliations can leave people a choice of hating themselves for their failures or hating others for their success. Most people, of whatever race or religion, prefer to blame others.
America and Israel are the convenient scapegoats today. But the great Islamic civilizations began their decline before there was an America or a modern state of Israel.
The fate of much more than Iraq will depend on what the Iraqi elections tell us.