Brooks, Democratically Downscale

David Brooks' latest column may be a tad weak on the comparisons and light on the challenges, but he captures an essential truth of how the U.S. can win in Iraq: by regarding Iraqi democracy as something necessary because it is practical, not, as he puts it, "a luxury-brand vehicle, suited only for the culturally upscale."

Worrying Brooks is the message explicit in this Washington Post column by William Rasberry, who wrote: "[T]he new consensus seems to be that bringing American-style democracy to Iraq is no longer an achievable goal -- that the best we can hope for is a truce sufficient to get our troops out of a situation they shouldn't have been in in the first place."