Dems determined to ignore progress in Iraq
FACE
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn04.html
~~~~
Dems determined to ignore progress in Iraq
December 4, 2005
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
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Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, came out with a big statement on
Iraq last week. Did you hear about it? Probably not. Everyone was still raving
about his Democrat colleague, Rep. Jack Murtha, whose carefully nuanced position
on Iraq is: We're all doomed unless we pull out by next Tuesday! (I quote from
memory.)
Also, the United States Army is "broken," "worn out" and "living hand to mouth."
If the reaction to Murtha's remarks by my military readers is anything to go by,
he ought to be grateful they're still bogged down in Iraq and not in the
congressional parking lot.
It's just about acceptable in polite society to disagree with Murtha, but only
if you do it after a big 20-minute tongue bath about what "a fine man" he is (as
Rumsfeld said) or what "a good man" he is (as Cheney called him) or what "a fine
man, a good man" he is (as Bush phrased it). Nobody says that about Lieberman,
especially on his own side. And, while the media were eager to promote Murtha as
the most incisively insightful military expert on the planet, this guy
Lieberman's evidently some nobody no one need pay any attention to.
Here's why. His big piece on Iraq was headlined "Our Troops Must Stay."
And who wants to hear that? Not the media and certainly not Lieberman's
colleagues in the Defeaticrat Party. It must be awful lonely being Joe Lieberman
in the Democratic Party these days. Every time he switches on the news there's
John Kerry sonorously droning out his latest pretzel of a position: Insofar as I
understand it, he's not calling for a firm 100 percent fixed date of withdrawal
-- like, say, Feb. 4, 2 p.m.; meet at Baghdad bus station with two pieces of
carry-on. Don't worry, it's not like flying coach on TWA, you'd be able to
change the date without paying a surcharge. But Kerry drones that we need to
"set benchmarks" for the "transfer of authority." Actually, the administration's
been doing that for two years -- setting dates for the return of sovereignty,
for electing a national assembly, for approving a constitution, etc, and meeting
all of them. And all during those same two years Kerry and his fellow Democrats
have huffed that these dates are far too premature, the Iraqis aren't in a
position to take over, hold an election, whatever. The Defeaticrats were against
the benchmarks before they were for them.
These sad hollow men may yet get their way -- which is to say they may succeed
in persuading the American people that a remarkable victory in the Middle East
is in fact a humiliating defeat. It would be an incredible achievement. Peter
Worthington, the Canadian columnist and veteran of World War II and Korea, likes
to say that there's no such thing as an unpopular won war. The Democrat-media
alliance are determined to make Iraq an exception to that rule. In a week's
time, Iraqis will participate in the most open political contest in the history
of the Middle East. They're building the freest society in the region, and the
only truly federal system. In three-quarters of the country, life has never been
better. There's an economic boom in the Shia south and a tourist boom in the
Kurdish north, and, while the only thing going boom in the Sunni Triangle are
the suicide bombers, there were fewer of those in November than in the previous
seven months.
Meanwhile, Iraq's experiment in Arab liberty has had ripple effects beyond its
borders, pushing the Syrians most of the way out of Lebanon, and in Syria itself
significantly weakening Baby Assad's regime. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who's spent
years as a beleaguered democracy advocate in Egypt, told the Washington Post's
Jim Hoagland the other day that, although he'd opposed the Anglo-American
invasion of Iraq, he had to admit it had "unfrozen the Middle East, just as
Napoleon's 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force 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."
The Egyptians get it, so do the Iraqis, the Lebanese, the Jordanians and the
Syrians. The choice is never between a risky action and the status quo -- i.e.,
leaving Saddam in power, U.N. sanctions, U.S. forces sitting on his borders. The
stability fetishists in the State Department and the European Union fail to
understand that there is no status quo: things are always moving in some
direction and, if you leave a dictator and his psychotic sons in business, and
his Oil-for-Food scam up and running, and his nuclear R&D teams in places,
chances are they're moving in his direction.
Toppling Saddam was worth doing in and of itself. Toppling Saddam and trying to
"midwife" (in Ibrahim's word) a free society would be worth doing even if it
failed. But, as it happens, I don't believe it will fail, not just because of
Bush but because enough Iraqis -- Shia, Kurds and even significant numbers of
Sunnis -- are determined not to let it fail.
And here's where the scale of the Bush gamble becomes clear. Islam and "the
West" have a long history. And, without rehashing the last millennium and a
half, the Muslim conquest of Europe and then the Crusades and the fall of
Andalusia, if you take out a map of the world and look at the rise of the
European empires you notice a curious thing: in conquering the world the
imperial powers for the most part simply bypassed the Islamic world. They made
Africa and South Asia and Latin America and everywhere else seats of European
power, but they left the Middle East alone. And, even when they eventually got
their hands on the region, after the First World War, they made no serious
attempt to reform the neighborhood. We live with the consequences of that today.
So Bush has chosen to embark on a project every other great power of the last
half-millennium has shrunk from: the transformation of the Middle East. You can
argue the merits of that, but once it's underway it's preposterous to suggest we
need to have it all wrapped up by Jan. 24. The Defeaticrats' loss of proportion
is unworthy of a serious political party in the world's only superpower. In next
week's election, the Iraqi people will shame them yet again.
Copyright © Mark Steyn, 2005
The Happy Hippy
"FACE" <AFaceIn...@bellsouth.net> wrote ...
> "Defeaticrat" -- A good one.
Fits your agenda of demonisation well doesn't it. It's a shame you have
nothing else to offer.
> In a week's
> time, Iraqis will participate in the most open political contest in the
history
> of the Middle East. They're building the freest society in the region, and
the
> only truly federal system. In three-quarters of the country, life has
never been
> better. There's an economic boom in the Shia south and a tourist boom in
the
> Kurdish north, and, while the only thing going boom in the Sunni Triangle
are
> the suicide bombers, there were fewer of those in November than in the
previous
> seven months.
Steyn is living in his usual fantasy land. Best not mention the 18 US and 19
Iraqi troops reported killed and those injured since the start of the month;
those figures might make it look like things are actually getting worse
rather than better - the average of reported killings a day is rising, not
falling.