The news from the front in Iraq these days is good. The stunningly rapid sweep of American troops to Baghdad, the warmth with which they’ve been greeted by the Iraqi people, and the relatively small number of American casualties — “outstanding,” is how the leader of the democratic opposition to Saddam Hussein, Ahmad Chalabi, described it to us in a satellite-phone interview this week. “A vise is closing, and the days of a brutal regime are coming to an end,” is how President Bush put it yesterday. No doubt Americans across the country will be pausing this weekend to contemplate the courage of our fighting men and women — and, it wouldn’t surprise us, of the commander in chief.

It’s still possible, of course, that the coalition forces will be met with a setback, such as the use of chemical or biological weapons by Saddam Hussein’s regime. It’s possible, too, that terrorists, sent by Saddam’s regime or its allies, will strike at American cities. Even so, though, given how superheated the debate over this war was among the coastal elites in America, not to mention the opposition thrown up by our friends the French, it is not hard to imagine Americans start to remark on Mr. Bush’s own heroism. When it came down to it, someone had to make the call after the years of posturing at the United Nations. It took a lot of guts.

One could start to get a sense of this yesterday, as Mr. Bush met at Camp Lejeune with the family members of some of those Marines killed in action. It can’t be an easy task. “The president is a man of faith and a man of confidence, but it must frustrate him to hear the incessant carping of blow-dried Napoleons, hunkered-down in their air-conditioned studios night after night on the 24-hour news networks,” the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, said Wednesday night in a speech we excerpt in the adjacent columns. As the 43 rd president enters those sad meetings and breasts the televised carping, he no doubt will take strength from knowing that the Iraqi people will soon be free, and the American people more secure (and freer themselves), as the result of his leadership.