Notice how the phrase "the triumph of politics" is a wonderful thing in Iraq...

...but a disaster here.
Ironic as all get out, isn't it?

Hey, Wait for Us!

In Iraq, "a broad gathering of Sunni sheiks, clerics and political leaders formed a political alliance on Saturday, seeking to win back the political ground they had lost to Shiites," reports the New York Times from Baghdad:
The meeting was the first wide-scale effort by Iraq's embittered and increasingly isolated Sunnis to band together politically, and was broadly attended by what organizers said was about 2,000 Sunni Arabs from Baghdad and nearby cities. The gathering was an implicit acknowledgment that it had been a mistake to turn away from the political process and allow Shiites to control the government for the first time in modern Iraqi history. . . .
In speech after speech at the meeting, at a Baghdad social club, delegates called on fellow Sunnis to cast aside doubts and throw themselves into politics to try to weigh in on the writing of a constitution, which is under way in a Shiite-controlled committee in the National Assembly. Even the Association of Muslim Scholars, a leading voice in the Sunni election boycott, signed on as one of the conference's organizers.
Remember the calls for postponement of the Iraqi elections, on the ground that Sunni Arabs would not participate and civil war would ensue? Well, we do.
(Thanks to James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, OpinionJournal.com, the Academy, my agent...)