Prior to the war, the peace-process multilateralists were insistent in their belief that the Arab-Israeli crisis would have to be dealt with before we could move on to Iraq. As realpolitikers, it's also safe to assume they have deep misgivings about the neocon project to "make the world anew," starting in the Middle East.

For a while, even I was willing to let this self-referential framework go uncriticized. But then I started noticing a glaring inconsistency. Take the reconstruction of Iraq and Israeli-Palestinian peace process and lay them side-by-side. Which is the bigger, more ambitious project, and which will ultimately require the greater expenditure of political capital in the United States to keep it going? Is it reconciling the interests of different Muslim factions, or bringing together Arabs and Jews? Is it gradually building up representative institutions at the local level in Iraq (which the Iraqis so far seem to be welcoming) ultimately leading up to a democratic state, or getting the Palestinians to accept the existence of Israel? Which of these priorities, again, is supposed to reflect "wishful thinking?" Which one is the more risky, ambitious, revolutionary?

Rebuilding Iraq will be a long, difficult road. But bringing peace between Israel and Palestine is a more enormous task, requiring even greater faith that ancient rivalries will be put aside and Western notions of nonviolence, self-restraint, and fair dealing will prevail. And because the Middle East peace process wouldn't rely on military force and the power it brings to bear in breaking stalemates, all we'd have to go on is an intrinsic faith in values that happen to originate in the democratic West.

This is why Middle East peace couldn't have come before Iraq. Under the pretense of undertaking a more realistic approach to winning over the hearts and minds of the Arab street, we would have gotten bogged down in a decade-long project every bit as ambitious as Iraq and more, while the dictator in Baghdad sneered. Rather than a flashy distraction from the inglorious work of Middle East peace, Iraq is a stepping stone and a proving ground for the kinds of values that need to take root in a democratic Palestine if peace is to succeed.