I am not an optimist. I tend to expect the worst, then let myself be pleasantly surprised if it turns out better than that. The article below supplies the alternative rose colored glasses we can do no wrong view. It is an interesting read. My view when reading something like this is “Well, that would certainly be nice if it worked out that way…” but I just don’t think it really will. If it does though, I’ll be happy that I was wrong.

(As an example, at the time I thought the Reagan defence buildup and especially the “Star Wars” project were completely insane, however, in the decades following, when various former Soviet leaders talked about what had happened many of them mentioned that the USSR’s inability to keep up with the US on those fronts, especially when they thought they might have to expand even more to counter “Star Wars” was a direct and significant contributor to the changes in policy that led to the end of the Cold War… it may not have been exactly the way Reagan and his buddies thought things would happen… it almost definately was not… but in the rear view mirror, it seems to have been a good course after all… or at least we got very lucky.)

We’ll see if we get lucky again.

The Event of the Age
(Victor Hanson, National Review)

Yet here we stand, a little more than six months later, with a country that was the worst in the Middle East evolving into the best. We are witnessing nothing less than the revolutionary and great moral event of the age, and when it comes to pass, a reborn democratic Iraq will overturn almost all the conventional wisdom, here and abroad, about the Middle East, the nature and purpose of war in our age, the moral differences between Europe and America — and the place in history of George W. Bush.

(via Cold Fury)