The dividends, in full view

It was only 60 years ago when Japan was a powerful enemy that had struck America on it's own soil. Today, the Japanese have pledged to keep their troops in Iraq in a show of solidarity with America.

Before the warlords of Japan were defeated in World War II, you would have been called a fool by the American public if you said that one day, during their lifetime, they'd see the Japanese and American militaries working together towards a common goal.

Think of what you're hearing today about the prospects of a free Iraq becoming a model for the rest of the middle east; you'll hear that it's a utopian vision that can never come about (to which I say we're not looking to recreate Eden, we just want a stable, democratic Iraq to come out of all this), or even the statement that "the people of the middle east don't want/can't handle democracy (which strikes me as a borderline racist viewpoint)."

If the words that have been spoken recently by the interim Prime Minister of Iraq are any scale of what the majority of Iraqis believe, I think the dividends of this fight will become as apparent as have the dividends of dispatching with the warlords of Japan. We will, in time, gain a friend in the middle east that will shine the example of liberty and freedom for all other middle easterners to view.