By Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON POST
Friday, February 4, 2005; Page A17
"At polling centers hit by explosions, survivors refused to go home, steadfastly waiting to cast their votes as policemen swept away bits of flesh."
—The New York Times, Feb. 2, on the Iraqi elections.
Iraqis turned out to vote in great numbers, with great enthusiasm and determination. Surprise. The media have not been as surprised, noted a friend of mine, since the Nicaraguans turned out in their 1990 election to kick out the Sandinistas.
These two elections were 15 years apart, but the herd mentality of the liberal establishment never changes. They were shocked when those revolutionary darlings in Managua, magnet for long-haired Western "sandalistas" on revolutionary holiday, lost a free election -- to the candidate supported by the contras.
The liberal cliche of the time was that Third World people care more about food than about freedom. This kind of contempt for the political and spiritual dignity of people who live in different circumstances never goes away. It simply gets applied serially to different sets of patronized foreigners. Today we are assured with confidence that Arabs, consumed by tribe or religion or whatever, don't really care about freedom either.
On Jan. 30 millions of Iraqis said otherwise. They really do care about the right to speak freely and to vote secretly, the ordinary elements of democratic citizenship.
Why weren't Iraqis dancing in the streets on the day Saddam Hussein fell, critics have asked sneeringly. Some Iraqis, the young and more reckless, did dance. Others, I suspect, were too scared, waiting to see how things turned out. Would the United States leave them hanging as in 1991? Would it leave behind a "moderate" Baathist thug in its place?
Nearly 22 months later, Iraqis seemed convinced that there would indeed be a new day. And that is when the dancing started -- voters dancing and singing and celebrating, thrusting into the air their ink-stained fingers, symbol of their initiation into democracy. It was an undeniable, if delayed, feeling of liberation. Said one prominent Shiite spokesman: "We are celebrating the end of tyranny."
As if to make a point even more definitively, it was not the suicide bombers but the voters they killed at the polls who were buried as martyrs. The remains of one suicide bomber were spat upon. Another suicide bomber, reported Iraq's interior minister, was a child with Down syndrome. There are no words for the depths of such depravity, sending an innocent to murder innocents, dressing this poor child in explosives and then leading him to his slaughter.
These are the people whom Michael Moore, avatar of the Democratic left, calls the "Minutemen." These are the people who Ted Kennedy, spokesman for the Democratic left, says are in a battle with the United States for "the hearts and minds of the people."
This is both stupid and pernicious. The United States is trying to win hearts and minds; the insurgents are trying to destroy hearts and minds, along with the bodies that house them. They have no program. They have no ideology. They call themselves the "Party of Return." Their only platform is to return themselves to power to continue the rape, pillage, torture and murder of the past 30 years. That appeals to the minority of the minority that profited from these enterprises, and to nobody else.
Their foreign allies, the Zarqawi jihadists, do have a platform, which is to destroy and outlaw democracy as a form of apostasy. The Zarqawi persuasion was put to a test on election day. It lost.
Leading Democrats are discomfited by this demonstration of Iraqi support for the Bush Doctrine. John Kerry urges that we not "overhype this election." At the very moment when the first seed of democracy is planted, the Democratic leaders want the United States to turn its attention immediately to withdrawal. Kennedy demands a timetable. Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Harry Reid demand a definitive exit strategy.
This might be terrifying to Iraqis who just risked their lives to get democracy underway, and who still remember the Baathist slaughter of tens of thousands 14 years ago when the United States urged them to rise up against their oppressors and then abandoned them. But it will not be terrifying to Iraqis, because they know that this is a different time and a different Bush. He won't listen to the Saudis. He won't listen to the Democrats. If the world knows anything about George W. Bush, it is that he does what he says. Iraq's president called this talk about withdrawal "complete nonsense." Which is why the Iraqis could dance.
Iraqi 'freedom' under an American flag, which, incidentally, is a convenient result of a greater agenda by this administration, supported by a great deal of American's who have been given a color coded reason to be afraid. Terror, terror, terror; freedom, freedom, freedom.
And if the election is so important, why did Dubbs (in his spiffy flight suit) declare the war won last year.
A more appropriate response may have been "yeah, I feel it was worth it" not trying to pass that off as a statement of fact - because I'm with HECK and millions of others that feel that it wasn't worth it. Not by a long shot.
You know, the time and resources put into this military effort could have been much better spent on (wait for it) feeding and building up a country of millions who are starving, rather than freeing millions of people who, for the most part, aren't in danger of their government and just living out their daily lives oblivious to the hardships within said country.
I'd rather feed people in agony than give the ignorant a dose of reality.
So, in conclusion, they can dance; bully for them.
The Honourable Dubya at the 2005 State of the Union address
We will pass along to our children all the freedoms we enjoy -- and chief among them is freedom from fear. ...The only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror, and replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom. ...America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. ...And because democracies respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance of freedom will lead to peace. ... The beginnings of reform and democracy in the Palestinian territories are now showing the power of freedom to break old patterns of violence and failure. ... To promote peace and stability in the broader Middle East, the United States will work with our friends in the region to fight the common threat of terror, while we encourage a higher standard of freedom. ...We expect the Syrian government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom. Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror -- pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. ... Our generational commitment to the advance of freedom, especially in the Middle East, is now being tested and honored in Iraq. ...And the victory of freedom in Iraq will strengthen a new ally in the war on terror ... We will succeed in Iraq because Iraqis are determined to fight for their own freedom, and to write their own history. ...We are standing for the freedom of our Iraqi friends, and freedom in Iraq will make America safer for generations to come. ...And we have said farewell to some very good men and women, who died for our freedom, and whose memory this nation will honor forever. ...Ladies and gentlemen, with grateful hearts, we honor freedom's defenders, and our military families. ...The attack on freedom in our world has reaffirmed our confidence in freedom's power to change the world. We are all part of a great venture, to extend the promise of freedom in our country... and to spread the peace that freedom brings. ...The road of Providence is uneven and unpredictable -- yet we know where it leads. It leads to freedom. Thank you, and may God bless America.
we get it... freedom