US: President George Bush looked unusually relaxed and confident as he delivered a major speech yesterday on the spread of democracy in the Middle East.
A smile played around the corner of his mouth as he pronounced that "freedom will prevail in Lebanon".
The president had good reason to be upbeat. He is said by officials to feel "validated" by the rapid pace of change in recent weeks that has brought about a public reassessment of his doctrine of pre-emption and spreading democracy. Many of his critics have been silenced and some have begun to say that Bush was perhaps right after all.
White House aides cite elections in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories, limited elections in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, a move towards multi-candidate presidential elections in Egypt, and the capitulation by Syria to demands to leave Lebanon, as evidence of the success of Bush's policies.
They also point out that the "Arab spring" followed pro-western democratic revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine where the US was a player.
The new mood was captured in a broadcast exchange on the liberal Daily Show in New York, where host Jon Stewart put it to former Clinton aide Nancy Soderberg that Bush may have been right about this all along about the Middle East as "I've never seen results like this ever in that region."
Ms Soderberg replied: "There is a wave of change going on, and if we can help ride it in the second term of the Bush administration, more power to them."
On National Public Radio, commentator Daniel Schorr, a frequent critic of the administration, startled regular listeners by saying Bush "may have had it right", though he cautioned that "it's a bit early to be taking a victory lap".
This week's edition of Newsweek carries on its cover a headline about Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution" whose words are "Where Bush Was Right". On Capitol Hill, questions about duplicity over weapons of mass destruction that led to the invasion of Iraq no longer arise, and the daily death toll in Iraq does not prompt the concern it did.
In his speech yesterday at the National Defense University in Washington, Bush said this was "a time of great consequences" which he compared to other periods when the US brought about global transformations, such as the fall of communism. His strategy, he said, was "to eliminate the terrorist threat abroad so we do not face them here at home" and to "change the conditions that give rise to terror".
The advance of hope in the Middle East required new thinking but, "by now it should be clear that authoritarian rule is not the wave of the future: it is the last gasp of a discredited past".
Mr Bush isolated Syria and Iran as holdouts against reform. "The Syrian government must end its 30-year occupation of Lebanon or become even more isolated," he said. "Delaying tactics and half measures" were unacceptable. "All Syrian military forces and intelligence personnel must withdraw before the Lebanese elections for these elections to be free and fair."
His message for the Lebanese people was that "the American people are on your side", though with unfortunate timing for Bush, the half-million Lebanese people demonstrating on the streets of Beirut as he spoke were calling for less, rather than more, American intervention in the region - a reminder that the future is fraught with danger.
Underlining this, the Washington Post carried a warning yesterday from former CIA officer Ray Close to colleagues that if Bush "makes the fatal mistake of arrogantly portraying a Syrian withdrawal in Lebanon as a personal triumph for himself in his 'War on Terror' and his 'Spreading Democracy' campaign - the fruits may turn out to be very bitter indeed".
However, Bush officials point to a comment by Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt that the elections in Iraq were the start of a new Arab world, and for people in Syria and Egypt too, "the Berlin Wall has fallen".
"It's still a very tenuous situation," said Sandy Berger, former president Clinton's national security adviser. "There's obviously both hope and danger."