Credit Bush's rhetoric, not his actions.

• Author: Biden, Joseph R.
• Position: Middle East Democracy: Who gets the credit? What are the lessons? - George W. Bush

In speaking about the Middle East, President Bush recently said "a critical mass of events is taking that region in a hopeful new direction." For the Middle East, historically bereft of democracy and clotted with autocrats and despots, the promise of a better life is raising expectations across the region.

Some Democrats, after nearly a century of efforts to inject the ennobling quality of universal freedom and human rights into the heart of our foreign policy agenda, seem uneasy about this president's recent focus on the idea. President Bush spoke with great eloquence in his second inaugural address about expanding freedom, and I was a little frustrated by the reception it received from some of my Democratic colleagues and friends around the world. The headline from the leading Green newspaper in Germany was "Bush Threatens More Freedom." Democrats at home were more circumspect, but for many, it seems that distaste for the messenger obscured the truth of the message.

If ever there was a time that proved that "good policy makes good politics"--and that politics makes strange bedfellows--today's global program to advance the cause of liberal democracy surely must be it.

What events are creating this critical mass the president is talking about? There's January's free elections in Iraq and Palestine, March's free municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, Egyptian President Mubarak's commitment to allow competitive elections for president, and the Lebanese people's demands for Syrian withdrawal and for free parliamentary elections.

I believe an enlightened American foreign policy, along with a little luck and a lot of perseverance, can help ensure that these developments will be remembered as seminal moments in a historic chain of events leading to a new era in the region. But it's important not just politically, but also for the sake of sound policy, for us to remember accurately and honestly what happened and why.

If we have reached a true tipping point, it seems to have been generated by recent events that had little or nothing to do with the Iraqi invasion: Arafat's death, the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, terror attacks in Saudi Arabia, and the increasingly vocal protests in Egypt. And in Iraq, while it cannot be denied that the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein was a necessary precondition, it was Ayatollah Sistani who insisted on early elections against the wishes of the White House. President Bush decided...