IN MANY WAYS, the year 2005 ends as it began: with millions of Iraqis defying the terrorists to cast ballots; with President Bush hailing the election as a milestone; with nit-pickers fretting about the sulky Sunnis; with the White House coming under fire for its homeland-security efforts; and with Democrats flying their George McGovern-Frank Church freak flag ever more ostentatiously.

Who were the Big Winners of 2005? It sounds terribly earnest and formulaic to say "the Iraqi people"--so let's include them among the broader class of "new democrats." Indeed, the past year saw historic elections not just in Iraq, but also in Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Egypt. The reformist germ even touched Saudi Arabia, which allowed municipal elections, and Kuwait, which granted women the right to vote and run for public office. According to Freedom House, the "modest but notable" advance of liberty in the Arab Middle East was "the most significant development" cited by its annual survey of world freedom in 2005. The top news, of course, came out of Iraq, where the number of Iraqis braving bombs and bullets to make it to the polls climbed from 8.5 million in January, to 9.8 million in October, to some 11 million in December.

None of this is irreversible. We must still crush the insurgency. And until Iraq's nascent democracy clears a series of sectarian hurdles, the specter of chaos will hover. To be sure, the momentum of the "Arab Spring" could still be turned back. The Mubarak regime just locked up Ayman Nour, Egypt's leading secular liberal, on trumped-up charges, and disrupted a parliamentary poll. Syria remains a terror-sponsoring thugocracy with extra-territorial ambitions in Lebanon. And should Iran go nuclear--on the watch of a messianic lunatic who not only wants to wipe Israel "off the map" but also believes in a coming apocalypse--it could unravel much of our progress in Iraq. The 1848 European revolution offers but one example of a "springtime of peoples" that was quickly squelched.

But if the coming decades do in fact witness a democratic reformation in Middle Eastern politics, historians will likely trace its roots back to the events of 2005--namely, to the purple fingers of Iraqi voters. Just listen to what longtime Egyptian democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim told columnist Jim Hoagland a few weeks ago in Washington. Ibrahim, who initially opposed the Iraq War, now believes U.S. intervention "has unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon's 1798 expedition did." The Iraqi elections, he said, compelled "the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda, even if only to fight against us. Look, neither Napoleon nor President Bush could impregnate the region with political change. But they were able to be the midwives."

Any mention of Big Winners in the Middle East must include the U.S. military forces stationed in and around Iraq and Afghanistan. Without them, the Taliban would still be calling the shots in Kabul; al Qaeda would still be using Afghanistan as a fountainhead for global terrorism; Saddam Hussein would still be gathering strength for his inevitable clash with the United States; Iraqis wouldn't have voted in three free elections this year; and, more than four years after 9/11, the dictators and jihadists would be emboldened.

For their courage, for their sacrifice, for their unflinching patriotism, U.S. servicemen deserve the thanks and prayers of all civilized peoples. They were the Biggest Winners of 2005--as they are every year--not just for their combat duty, but also for their humanitarian relief work in tsunami-scarred Southeast Asia and earthquake-rattled Pakistan.

In U.S. politics, a Big Winner of 2005 was John McCain, who spent the past year mending fences with GOP conservatives while staying in the good graces of his always dependable boosters in the Washington press corps. Sen. McCain won plaudits from just about everyone for his drive to trim pork-stuffed spending bills and maintain fiscal sanity after Hurricane Katrina. He took on the White House over a blanket "torture" ban--and got his way--but also struck a Churchillian pose on Iraq, rigidly supporting the war and rebuking its critics. He initially caught flack from the Right for being the chief broker of last May's "Gang of 14" deal on judicial nominees. But once it sunk in that the agreement was actually a boon to Bush and the GOP Senate, the anti-McCain chatter quieted.