Victory over Iraq has now been formally declared by President Bush, and it's time to welcome home troops with the fanfare they deserve.

And when that happy day is over, it will be time to begin, as President Bush said last night, to "the difficult task of securing a potentially historic peace" in the Middle East.

The starting point will be to remember that this war was fought, after all, to enforce United Nations resolutions, and there are other United Nations resolutions dealing with the Middle East which have been lying around, unenforced, for years. If we insist on picking and choosing resolutions we will enforce and resolutions we will not, we quickly will cease to be regarded as protectors, and come to be regarded as hypocrites.