The US embassy has kindly invited me to a party on election night to drink free beer and watch the count until it is quite clear who is going to be next president of the US.
If I'd attended the party four years ago, and stayed drinking until the last chad from Florida had been analysed, I would now be in the family plot in Glasnevin, and my liver would be in a very large case in the National Museum.
But that's not why I won't be up sitting up through the night, drinking beer as one screen becomes two, and two becomes four and I start wondering how Calvin Coolidge is doing in Wyoming.
No, I won't be there because, despite all the predictable and witless whoops and roars which will greet every Kerry success, the outcome of the election will make little or no difference to Iraq.
The Americans are in, and they have to stay in and finish the job, holding preliminary elections in January and final elections in a year's time: and then they leave. For having demolished the Ba'athist regime, and abolished the old Iraqi army and police force, they cannot withdraw before they have created meaningful institutions in their place.
To be sure, the manner of the US invasion was delinquent beyond belief. The use of overwhelming force is a key military doctrine in the invasion of anyone's homeland, even as liberator: that the Americans went in unable even to secure and hold a prime target such as a nuclear weapons plant with its 400 tons of explosive is too fatuous for words.
For it is one thing to be caught unprepared by an attacker: but for the attacker to be unprepared after two-and-a-half years of "preparation" must surely be unprecedented in the annals of warfare. And that 50 Iraqi recruits - the most precious resource the US has - at this stage of the conflict could be allowed to travel unarmed passes all belief.
The US is now reaping the whirlwind for its criminal lack of preparation: but the entire world will reap the hurricane unless the US project in Iraq is successful. Whoever rules Iraq governs about half of the world's oil reserves, which cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of a lunatic regime of beheaders and suicide-bombers.
There has been much stupid, chauvinistic talk in the British media about how much better the British army is doing in Basra with its "hearts and minds" approach. Well, there's a reason for that: the British have essentially handed power in Basra to local clerics.
But when they have been engaged in fighting, they have been just as ruthless as the Americans. Scores, if not hundreds, of Iraqis were killed in largely unreported gun-battles with the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment Battle Group, in the most savage infantry warfare the British army has seen since Korea. At least one Victoria Cross - to a young Welsh soldier - is likely to be awarded as a result of the fighting. Nothing "hearts and minds" about that.
No matter who wins the election, there's going to be more serious fighting across Iraq, made worse by the continuing shortage of US troops. The huge logistical component required to keep a modern army in the field means that the US has only 60,000 rifles in Iraq.
An entire division of National Guard - the 36th - is now serving there. These are part-time soldiers, rather like an up-gunned FCA: men who are essentially civilians are now being deployed in combat in the most dangerous place on earth - and they could still be there in a year's time.
Not even the darkest prognostications from the most-anti war critics 18 months ago foresaw the horror which is now unfolding in Iraq. Absolutely no one predicted that an easy victory would be followed by the melancholy chain of events we have witnessed since then.
For we have passed into a new era of savagery without precedent in modern history - not merely the videoed beheadings, but the latest generation of suicide bombers, who pack their family into their cars in order to deter US soldiers from shooting at them. All - children, bomber and target - then perish in these attacks.
Depressingly, European elites seem to be unaware of the historic nature of the battle under way. Only an abysmal ignorance of the American heartland could have prompted the infantile campaign of the Guardian in London to persuade the voters of Clark County, Ohio, to vote for Kerry. British liberals talking down to American voters pretty much characterises how much of Europe regards the US: as something backward to be patronised and cajoled. English patricians telling Americans to vote for Kerry is like the same people offering electoral advice to the voters of Kerry for our elections.
The Americans have not got a peace candidate and a war candidate: they've got two candidates who will fight the two wars - one in Iraq, the other against terrorism - in slightly different ways. Kerry is not promising peace; the reverse. He is promising to kill terrorists and to increase the numbers of soldiers in Iraq, and he is right.
The US should now be deploying every possible unit there, finally stripping all its troops from mainland Europe forever. This might finally teach us Europeans that it's time we grew up and learned to defend ourselves, rather than depend on the US, as we have done for the past 60 years.
Enjoy the election night party. The outcome will be much the same, no matter who wins.