Gerard Baker in the Times just gets better and better. Shredding the usual suspects who could only sneer as usual at President Bush's State of the Union speech, Baker snorts:

'The Guardian insisted it amounted to a near-declaration of war on Iran and Syria. The BBC was dutifully sniffy about the very idea of promoting democratic change in the world. You sometimes wonder how the BBC and The Guardian might have reported the Sermon on the Mount: “Self-proclaimed Messiah endorses poverty for all. Says persecuted must grin and bear it.” Or Churchill’s oration on taking office: “Prime Minister promises to fight mighty Germans with nothing more than personal body fluids.” '

As Baker says, not only is the President making it harder and harder for the US to return to its pre-9/11 appeasement-of-tyranny mode, but the Iraq election has transformed the atmosphere. Bush's aim, to end tyranny and terror in the Arab and Muslim world, is so breathtaking in its scope that some prudent scepticism is in order. Can it really be done? Are not the obstacles simply overwhelming? Will America have the stomach to carry these words into deeds? And in Iraq itself, it would be foolish to deny that the whole thing might still go pear-shaped.

But -- so far, things are cautiously promising, notwithstanding the terrible violence. Far from the appeasenik predictions of a) the election not taking place b) no-one coming out to vote or c) a mullocracy being voted into power, it looks as if Iraq will be governed by a coalition of secular and religious forces. As the Times reports elsewhere, Ayatollah Ali Sistani's United Iraqi Alliance, headed by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, is likely to emerge the winner. But Sistani has so far played a statesmanlike game:

'Although it has a strong religious bias, Sciri is unlikely to propose its leader, the cleric Abdelaziz al-Hakim, as prime minister. Most Iraqis would prefer a more secular face at the helm, making it likely that figures such as Adel Abdel Mehdi, the Finance Minister, or Ibrahim Jaafari, leader of the conservative Dawa party which forms part of the Shia coalition, could step to the fore.Another front-runner is Hussein al-Shahristani, a physicist who was jailed by Saddam Hussein for refusing to build a nuclear bomb and who escaped to Iran in 1991. He is also close to Ayatollah al-Sistani, who has rejected the Iranian model of governing theocracy'.

Sciri's links to Iran need not be troubling. Given the huge gulf between the deeply unpopular Iranian mullocracy and the people, an alternative, moderate Shi-ite power base in Iraq that crucially believes in the separation of mosque and state might help bring about the toppling of the Iranian regime that the US hoped would be a consequence of the removal of Saddam, and which they are frantically now talking up.

Clearly, there are enormous caveats to enter in all this -- not the least of which is what President Bush, for all his fine words, actually intends to do to stop Iran from succeeding in developing nuclear weapons. But ultimately, optimism for the eventual success of good over evil rests on a fundamental belief in the deepest impulses of human nature towards peace and freedom, and to act in the long-term interests of the human species. And if one has that belief, one cannot fail to be moved by what has happened already. As Baker concludes:

'There is an unstoppable momentum for change in the Middle East now. In just two years tyrannies have been felled in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Palestine, the inexorable clock of human mortality has ended another. But the crucial element was always going to be the voluntary and courageous act of self-assertion that democratic and free elections represent — a message heard around the region and the world'.