Current anti-war arguments (specifically, Francis Fukuyama’s) are outdated, dubious, and unreflective of conditions in Iraq, argues Bret Stephens in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Perhaps it’s worth considering what we have gained now that Iraq looks like a winner.

Here’s a partial list: Saddam is dead. Had he remained in power, we would likely still believe he had WMD. He would have been sitting on an oil bonanza priced at $140 a barrel. He would almost certainly have broken free from an already crumbling sanctions regime. The U.S. would be faced with not one, but two, major adversaries in the Persian Gulf. Iraqis would be living under a regime that, in an average year, was at least as murderous as the sectarian violence that followed its collapse. And the U.S. would have seemed powerless to shape events.

Instead, we now have a government that does not threaten its neighbors, does not sponsor terrorism, and is unlikely to again seek WMD. We have a democratic government, a first for the Arab world, and one that is increasingly capable of defending its people and asserting its interests.

It’s a persuasive piece. And just as importantly, this recent upswing in good fortune might explain why the only story on Iraq in the A section of today’s New York Times is about the end of an internal political struggle between Iraqi political leaders and the United Nations and American officials to agree on bylaws for the forthcoming democratic elections. Many suggest that Iraq needs political reconciliation. But an emergent politics itself might be the first sign of this reconciliation.