A trio of articles in honor of Iraqi election day:

Victor Davis Hanson lances the boil that is the left's perception of the world:

For some time, a large number of Americans have lived in an alternate universe where everything is supposedly going to hell. If you get up in the morning to read the New York Times or Washington Post, watch John Murtha or Howard Dean on the morning talk shows, listen to National Public Radio at noon, and go to bed reading Newsweek it surely seems that the administration is incommunicado (cf. “the bubble”), the war is lost (“unwinnable”), the Great Depression is back (“jobless recovery”), and America about as popular as Nazi Germany abroad (“alone and isolated”).

But in the real adult world, the economy is red-hot, not mired in joblessness or relegating millions to poverty. Unemployment is low, so are interest rates. Growth is high, as is consumer spending and confidence. Our Katrina was hardly as lethal as the Tsunami or Pakistani earthquake. Thousands of Arabs are not rioting in Dearborn. American elderly don’t roast and die in the thousands in their apartments as was true in France. Nor do American cities, like some in Chinese, lose their entire water supply to a toxic spill. Americans did not just vote to reject their own Constitution as in some European countries.

The military isn’t broken. Unlike after Vietnam when the Russians, Iranians, Cambodians, and Nicaraguans all soon tried to press their luck at our expense, most of our adversaries don’t believe the U.S. military is losing in Iraq, much less that it is wise now to take it on. Instead, the general impression is that our veteran and battle-hardened forces are even more lethal than was true of the 1990s — and engaging successfully in an almost impossible war.

Thomas Sowell comments on how the media's own "bleeding leads" help fulfill their own defeatist prophecies:

Neither our troops nor the terrorists are in Iraq just to be killed. Both have objectives. But any objectives we achieve get short shrift in the mainstream media, if they are mentioned at all.

Our troops can kill ten times as many of the enemy as they kill and it just isn't news worth featuring, if it is mentioned at all, in much of the media. No matter how many towns are wrested from the control of the terrorists by American or Iraqi troops, it just isn't front-page news like the casualty reports or even the doom-saying of some politicians.

The fact that these doom-saying politicians have been proved wrong, again and again, does not keep their latest outcries from overshadowing the hard-won victories of American troops on the ground in Iraq.

And an embedded reporter comes to his own startling conclusion:

I’ve listened to the soldiers and Parrish about the missing pieces of the puzzles that don’t reach home. My selfish, journalistic drive immediately thinks “Perfect. A story that hasn’t been told. Let me at it.”

But I have a slight hesitation; I need to keep balanced. I can’t be a cheerleader, even if I have a soft spot for the hometown troops, especially after the welcome they’ve shown me. I still need to be truthful and walk the centerline and report the good or bad.

But then I realize it’s not a conflict of interest. If I am truly unbiased, then I need to get used to this one simple fact; that the untold story, might in fact, be a positive one...

Finally, for the "bonus round" (for those who've managed to get this far), we have this Washington Post piece with the headline Iraqi Vote Draws Big Turnout Of Sunnis, Anti-U.S. Sentiment Is Motivator for Many

I am constantly surprised by this attitude. Not only must the US succeed at something, it must be liked while doing so. Anything less is judged a failure.

Listen folks, the world's stage is not a high school auditorium, and we are not in a popularity contest. I think it is very important that the rest of the world's countries respect and do business with us, and that we succeed at whatever we set our mind to. It's nice if we're popular at the same time, but anyone who thinks its a requirement needs to have their head examined.

As far as Iraqis specifically? I'm reminded of a nature show I saw once on PBS, about wolves being raised for future release into the wild. Their handlers did not treat them nicely, did not say kind things, did not even attempt any sort of rapport. They made sure they stayed healthy and learned how to survive in the wild. The reason? "It's a tough world out there, and we want to make sure they understand relying on us is not how you survive in it."

Indeed...