I know I probably ought to stick to nice, safe, non-flammable topics like Battlestar Galactica, but after reading today’s headlines and all the associated chatter buzzing through the blogosphere, I’ve just got to throw in my own two cents on the Iraqi election that took place over the weekend.

First of all, the Iraqi people should be commended for the courage and optimism they have just demonstrated to the world. I sincerely mean that.

Look, I’m not one to get all moisty-eyed whenever someone breathlessly intones the Yang worship word “free-dom” (obscure Star Trek reference, sorry), but the Iraqis were under the threat of violent death if they showed their faces at the polling stations, and somewhere in the range of 60% of them did it anyway. That’s pretty amazing. It’s also pretty sobering when you realize that this is about the same percentage of Americans who bother to vote, and the only adversity we have to face in the name of self-determination is a short drive to the polling place, a little interaction with our neighbors, and the anxiety produced by being away from the TV for longer than a typical bathroom break. How many of us would bother to vote if we faced the very real chance of being blown up as we stood in line? Not many, I’d wager, and so I say “good on you” to the Iraqi people.

However, I think those voices who are claiming that the election represents vindication for President Bush’s Iraq policy are either naive or hopelessly partisan. It should be obvious to anyone not blinded by politics that there is still a long way to go over there before things can honestly be said to be improving, and much work yet to be done before Iraq is a functioning nation again. The way I see it, Republicans are a little too quick these days to congratulate themselves — the words “mission accomplished” come to mind, as do “a sweeping mandate.” Their puffed-up sense of triumphalism needs to be countered with some notes of reasonable caution. I’m not saying the elections were meaningless. I don’t believe they were. But I do believe in the words of the excellent blogger Bull Moose, who memorably said this morning that, “we should not fall victim to either sour pessimism or irrational exuberance.”

In the more concise words of Princess Leia, “It’s not over yet.”

At this point, some of my conservative readers are probably shaking their heads and tut-tutting over my knee-jerk leftie negativism, wondering how we liberals can be so filled with political bile that we can’t accept the wonders that are about to flower in the Middle East. Let me clue these folks in on something they might not believe: I actually want things to turn out well in Iraq. I really do. I think all rational liberals — as opposed to the irrational kind, and there is a difference despite what Ann Coulter and her ilk would have you believe — want things to turn out well, for the sake of both the Iraqi people and our own men and women who are currently so far from home. I get very aggravated with the pointy-headed protester types who have been unable to wrap their brains around the fact that the time to stop the war was before it started. We’re there now, and whether we went in for the right reasons or the wrong ones is largely irrelevant for the foreseeable future. The historians will figure out the answer to that question. But right now it is in everyone’s best interests — liberal, conservative, and Iraqi — for things to turn out right in Iraq. Will this election lead to things turning out right? Honestly, I have no idea. It might, and I want to believe that it will. But it also might not, and that’s something I wish conservatives were willing to at least consider, instead of expecting everyone in this country to applaud everytime anyone speaks the word “democracy.” There are a million things that could go wrong in the wake of these elections, up to and including a full-blown civil war between the marginalized Sunnis who used to run the country and the Shi’a who are apparently going to run it now.

Even if that worst-case scenario is avoided, there is still the very real possibility that the law of unintended consequences will come into play. What will President Bush do if the new Iraqi government’s first order of business is to ask us to get the hell out of their country? Will we gracefully withdraw? What if the new government is perceived by other Arab nations as illegitimate because of U.S. involvement in its creation? What will we do if the people of Iraq use their new-found power of self-determination to install an Islamic theocracy similar to Iran’s? Would we be able to accept anything other than our vision of a new regime in Iraq?

I’m not intending to pee on the birthday cake here, I’m really not. I’m not saying these things to be a pessimist or play partisan games or stubbornly try to deny a president I don’t like any sort of credit. I’m just trying to make the point that it’s too early to say what the outcome of this weekend’s bit of history will be, and I wish people would stop talking as if everything is now settled because all those Iraqis have purple thumbs. The election may make all the difference in the world. It may make no difference at all. Whichever, we can’t declare a victory and we can’t say the end is in sight until we see what happens next…