A startling new poll shows dramatically increased support for the war on terror.

Who are these gullible people? you might ask. The Americans Michael Moore described as the most stupid people in the world?

Hardly. They're citizens of the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia.

For the first time ever in a major Muslim nation, more people favor US-led efforts to fight terrorism than oppose them (40% to 36%). Importantly, those who oppose US efforts against terrorism have declined by half, from 72% in 2003 to just 36% today.

For the first time ever in a Muslim nation since 9/11, support for Osama Bin Laden has dropped significantly (58% favorable to just 23%).

65% of Indonesians now are more favorable to the United States because of the American response to the tsunami, with the highest percentage among people under 30.

Indeed, 71% of the people who express confidence in Bin Laden are now more favorable to the United States because of American aid to tsunami victims.

The Terror Free Tomorrow poll was conducted by the leading Indonesian pollster, Lembaga Survei Indonesia, and surveyed 1,200 adults nationwide with a margin of error of ± 2.9 percentage points.

If we're consistent in our defense of freedom, people will notice, and even our enemies will play into our hands. This happened in Iraq, where the hostile satellite networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya never missed a chance to show an anti-American protest. But what their audiences in Iran and the Arab world saw was something more -- not just anti-American protest, but anti-American protest that was allowed by the Americans. (The boomerang effect was something like what happened to the Soviet Union when it broadcast reports of Americans protesting the Vietnam War, only to have Soviet audiences notice that the Americans were not only free to protest, but also had new shoes!) Freedom is contagious, if we let it be, and open media are the most potent vector by which it spreads. That should drive our strategy, and our tactics, most of the time.

But what's more remarkable to me is seeing solidly anti-war, anti-Bush columnists like the Philadelphia Inquirer's Trudy Rubin having to go back a full two years in order to come up with an "I told you so!":

Back in January 2003, I wrote about liberal Arab intellectuals who had adopted a "big bang" theory about the coming Iraq war.

They preferred any change at all to the political paralysis that gripped the Middle East. They felt squeezed between the repression of authoritarian rulers and the growing popularity of Islamists. They felt an Iraq war would break up the Mideast's political logjam.

And they were right.

The logjam is broken, the wood hurtling downstream. The Iraq war - and Iraqi elections - precipitated a political chain reaction whose end we can't foresee.

I'm glad to know she was right all along.

Never mind what she wrote just weeks before:

A U.S. triumph in Iraq would send a dramatic message. "If we can defeat a terrorist regime in Iraq, it will be a defeat for terrorists globally," Wolfowitz said in a speech on Oct. 16. Moreover, "[Saddam's] demise will open opportunities for governments and institutions to emerge in the Muslim world that are respectful of fundamental human dignity and freedom...."

In other words, Iraq not only could become a democracy but could be the launch pad for transforming the entire Mideast.

Only an a utopian dreamer could put forward such a vision.

He's not the only one.

MORE: Jonah Goldberg wants to know whatever happened to the "huge" story about missing explosives at al Qaaqaa.

I want to know whatever happened to the reality based community....