Afghan Election: Proof of Success in the War on Terror?

William Safire asks whether we are focussed on the wrong side of the Afghanistan Elections.

Too much world media coverage will focus on pictures of violence at polling places, not on the big news: lines of courageous Afghans patiently waiting to vote. Tinhorn despots are passing out leaflets in refugee camps promising divine rewards to anyone who kills a poll worker...Such terrorist acts by die-hard Taliban insurgents may be excitingly pictorial, but images of Muslims, especially women, voting for the first time - and of candidates for office literally taking their lives in their hands to campaign - are deemed not sufficiently mesmerizing...Another reason to downplay or dismiss Election Day in Afghanistan is that it is clearly good news for America and its allies, who are directly responsible for this outbreak of freedom in a Muslim land.

The same can well be said for Iraq. It makes you wonder what Germany would be like today if Truman's had been forced to run against a Senator who called the occupation a "miserable failure."