Often being right is a helluva lot more difficult than being wrong:

What was in doubt, however, was whether the U.S. could prevail if the war became an extended test of wills against a determined foe using guerrilla and terrorist tactics. This was a test not of the skill or bravery of the American soldier, but of the home front’s willingness to see the war through; a test in which the key to victory wasn’t competence but perseverance.

President Bush passed that test. He did so by dint of the very characteristics his critics found so objectionable: his certitude that going to war was the right thing to do; his conviction that Iraqis want to be free. To prevail, Mr. Bush had to wager his Presidency on a course of action that, by the summer of 2004, the chattering classes believed was doomed.

The American people also passed the test. We don’t buy the myth that Mr. Bush bamboozled the public into believing there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11. Still, most Americans understood that, in their respective but parallel efforts, Saddam and Osama bin Laden were both testing America’s credibility, which had been diminished during the Clinton years.

Then there is the niggling little detail about not getting a yellow streak down your back during the darkest hours:

The people who really concern us here--the people who did not pass the test--are those who signed up for the war at the beginning only to find one excuse or another to sign out before it was won. Usually, those excuses centered on some Bush bungle, real or alleged, that no “competent” Administration would have made but that was said to have rendered the whole enterprise morally sullied and irremediable. The looting of Baghdad falls into this category, as does the political wallowing in the abuses of Abu Ghraib.

Opinion Journal (RTWT)

In 4 years we have seen 2 dictators toppled, 2 democracies born, 50 million people liberated, the breaking out of peace in 2 other hotspots, and the hope for even more freedom and democracy in the near future. I hope the cowards don’t get in the way.