Yes, they Did

Despite the very real threats from al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the very real deaths that suicide bombing caused in Iraq, far more registered voters in that country obdurately turned out to have a say in their new government than either the country itself might have hazarded would brave the threats, or the international community anticipated, viewing the event from afar.

People were fearful, and with good reason. But they were also defiant. And they turned out in amazing numbers, even in the most volatile places where violence could be expected to occur. Their purpose, to cast that ballot, and to celebrate that purple-stained finger, elevated the country's independent voting day to a true exercise in responsible democracy.

Even though Sunday's national voting day concluded with 38 people dead and over 80 people injured throughout the country as a result of violence, including 25 people who were hurt when an apartment building collapsed in an early-morning bomb blast in Baghdad, the country did itself proud in the voter turn-out.

Whether, once U.S. troops pull out as scheduled in 2011 - concluding their combat mission in the country, withdrawing to surrender safety and security entirely to the new government - the country's own security forces will be capable of securing their country when future occasions arise as they must, requiring security, is yet to be seen.

But a milestone has been reached, and perhaps there will be hope for the future of the country, after all. Not that one single event can predict a final outcome, given its proximity to Iran and the influence the Islamist Republic will have on its neighbour. Nor that internecine violence and a return to the brutal sectarian atrocities is not still a possibility.

But, in the best of all possible worlds, one success may inevitably lead to another. Even if we don't live in the best of all possible worlds. An impossibility, clearly, in a world populated by all-too-fallible human beings.