01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, February 1, 2005

As Iraq gets its first free elections, I hope that Brown University Professor William Beeman and his disciples will have a chance to read "Assignment Afghanistan," a report about post-liberation Afghanistan by Washington Post writer Pamela Constable, in the February Smithsonian magazine.

She gives a moving account of Afghanistan's first election, describing "farmers and herders who lived hard lives on meager land" having "an almost childish excitement, a look both nervous and dignified: a feeling of hope . . . gazing down on the [ballot] as if it were a precious flower."

And while a free and open society has attendant ills -- hey, we have corruption, crooks, and ethnic differences right here in River City, folks! -- the Afghanistan she describes is far different from the one predicted by Professor Beeman when he pontificated in the pages of The Journal and on the local airwaves at the time of its liberation.

One can easily forget that all the "War is not the answer" bumper stickers and posters first appeared when we entered Afghanistan -- well before Iraq.

KARL F. STEPHENS, M.D.

Barrington