Iraq the Model has a post as Mohammed writes about the feelings he has on the eve of the election. You can just feel the excitement he and his friends feel as they prepare to vote. It really is a moving post. And check out the cute picture he has up on the top of the page.

With joy, worry, fear and hope I await tomorrow. Our hearts beat fast hurrying the clock to bring us faster to the other shore.

Tomorrow it’s going to be us who decide and I can feel the greatness of the responsibility because the result will draw the shape of our future and will determine how long it will take till we can announce victory in this war; our war against the past, against the past’s illusions and the past’s mistakes; with our hands we can make this war last shorter… with our own choices.

One year ago we wanted to defeat terror and the shadows of dictatorship and tell them that we are not willing to go backwards and that we’re ready to build a new Iraq where the people choose their representatives…
The choice didn’t matter then as much as voting itself did; all we wanted to do was to go and cast our votes regardless of the choices we made.

Yesterday we were sitting together with our friends talking and discussing our points of view. We found that our ambitions are way bigger than the mere idea of voting or practicing our right to elect, now we feel that our votes are a responsibility and a heavy one.
We are hesitant and worried about our choices and maybe the opinion polls results that we’ve seen-or at least from what I hear from people I meet-indicate that there’s a higher percentage than normal of people who haven’t made up their mind yet on who to vote for.

Me and my friends were sitting discussing “who’s best for Iraq?” and the reasons on which each one of us based his/her opinion. I was seeing a drastic change in the sense of the historic responsibility we shoulder.
I see my friends call their friends and acquaintances encouraging them to vote for this candidate or that list and putting effort in convincing them with this or that idea.

In a matter of one year questions and answers changed a lot; less than a year ago the question was “will you vote?” But now the question is “who are you going to vote for?”
We are making progress, definitely we are!

The contrast between what used to be in Iraq and the possibilities that now exist are mazing to me sitting in my safe home in North Carolina. Imagine what it must be like for Mohammed and his friends to anticipate the moment that Iraqis choose their own government. I remember just a few years ago reading all these wise writers saying that there could be no such thing as a democracy in an Arab country. Iraq is trying to prove these naysayers wrong. Can't Americans put their partisan biases aside and be happy for the Iraqis?

This couldn't have happened without the United States and it would be nice if we could pause for a few minutes here in America and take some pride in what we have done. You can despise Bush for going into a war that you don't agree with. You can mourn those who have lost their lives in Iraq. You can want to pull our troops out as soon as possible. It is possible to hold all of those positions and still to be amazed at the idea of an Arabic country going from a brutal dictatorship to a democracy. If this election is successful, Americans and Iraqis will have pulled off something that few people thought possible. Whatever you think about the war, it seems hard not to think that this election is a good thing for Iraq and the Middle East and to wish them all the success possible as they embark on the experiment of democracy.

If you read the many writings by American founders in the early years of our country, you sense their doubts that the great American experiment would succeed. It was those doubts that led to the calling of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. In that critical period as the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation became clear to such influential leaders as Washington, Madison, and Hamilton, there were deep fears that the Revolution was going to be for nought and that we were going to descend into a quarrelling group of 13 different states and be of such weakness that European powers would overwhelm our infant country. Few in Europe thought the American experiment would be a success and even fewer would have predicted where America would be even 30 years later. We tend to look back and think that our history was inevitable. It wasn't.

I wonder how the Iraqi history books 50 years from now are going to portray this moment in history. Perhaps, our efforts will fail and Iraq will become a tyranny as some new warlord grabs power. Then, these years will be a mere blip in the history books if they aren't excised out entirely. A brief moment of hope before darkness descended again. Or, perhaps, our efforts will succeed and this moment will be regarded as their founding moment and tomorrow's election will be celebrated as the beginning of their path to a new world of freedom.