Now and again you see something that lifts the standard for us all.

Here is a superb analysis by Jason Lee Steorts at NRO of the foreign policy process and Iraq – looked at through the eyes of a poker player – which gives us numerous insights into how things work (or not) in an uncertain world, and how and when it might make sense to take bold risks for potentially big gains.

Too many fine passages to quote in full. Read the whole thing. But this one gets to the heart of the matter:

Bush’s wager was based on a long-range, detail-poor projection, but the projection was an extrapolation of the 20th century’s trend line.

We have seen the feedback mechanism transform societies that lacked some or many of democracy’s historical and intellectual antecedents in the West, and we are watching it transform at least one country riven by awful sectarian divides: India, which is lifting itself out of the Third World toward power coupled with decency.

The Middle East is savage by comparison, but in Iraq we have a country with a genuine though weak sense of national identity alongside the factionalism; with great potential to create wealth; and with a dominant faction whose leader (Ayatollah Sistani) is comparatively secularist and moderate, and rejects the two failed models.

In any case, you assess risk relative to reward. The hope that the Iraq War will be transformational is a little like the hope of making a gutshot straight draw when there’s a huge pile of chips on the table: It’s a long shot, but if it happens you’re likely to win, and the reward will be big.

Plus our good friend Timescale:

Most of us had no idea how horrible the occupation would be. The commander-in-chief is the proper target of blame, but his naïveté reflected a much wider American naïveté. This naïveté was, I think, a result of our blessedness. If we weren’t so very fortunate, if we too had a history of Balkanization and tribalism, we might better have anticipated the Iraqi horror show.

But the show now has a chance of ending other than horribly, and for this Bush deserves credit. The surge ought to have happened earlier, but history might praise him for correcting his error more than damn him for not correcting it faster.

A hundred years from now, the period between the Golden Mosque bombing and successful implementation of the surge might look like Lincoln’s shuffling through generals—if Iraq succeeds.

Will Iraq succeed? Don’t be naïve, but don’t be dogmatically skeptical. Your view is blocked, and you are engaged in psychological guesswork…