I guess the surge worked
Our MSM has been relatively quiet about it, but Iraq is having another election, and democracy seems to be taking hold there. Oh, how awful those evil neocons were to have ruined a perfectly good country!
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Unfortunately Democracy in the Middle East is a package deal. Neither Iraq, Israel, the US or anyone else is going to know peace until the whole middle eastern political culture of tyranny is replaced. Unfortunately we have a president who thinks gitmo causes terrorism, no country has the right to impose democracy on another, believes Syria is being cooperative and moving away from Iran, Iran will give up its nuclear program once he sanctions in place from Russia and China which should happen any day now and the Mullahs would be crazy to use nuclear weapons and they have the same standards of sanity as we do so we are safe anyway. Furthermore if Iraqi democracy succeeds that would mean Bushhilter was right and that would violate the natural laws of the universe.
At least we have a proven highly professional, experienced secretary of state that can back up our President’s insights with sage advice and reset buttons.
Here’s my plan, the ancient Egyptians, when they had an unpopular Pharaoh would erase his name from monuments, effectively denying he ever existed. It may be tough but I say it’s worth a try with regards to Obama. That is, if the Mullahs and their A-bomb do not make the whole thing unnecessary.
Thank you for this opportunity to rant. I don’t know what I would do without you Neo Neocon.
Now what troubling, pessimistic headline would the liberal MSM have used for this story if Mccain had won?
Just for grins, suppose the Iraqis vote themselves a repressive, unrepresentative theocracy.
The take away is that Muslims really like that stuff.
That provides a problem for those who insist we’re all alike., that we all want the same thing for ourselves and our families.
It provides a problem for the multicultis in that all cultures are supposed to be terrific except ours which is perfectly vile. If this happens, these folks wanted it to. Now, I understand that repressive, unrepresentative theocracies are only bad when they’re our allies. And Iraq will be our ally.
Now what?
Lastly, if Muslims would do that to themselves voluntarily, what would they do elsewhere if they got some leverage?
Better hope the Iraqis start putting up statues of Jefferson and Jackson–and Bush and Reagan.
I would not worry about the Iraqis voting themselves a tyranny Aubrey for several reasons. One the country is too diverse, there are far more divisions than sunni, shiite and Kurd. It would be unlikely that any one group would be unable to decide on a single dictatorial party and subject the others to it. Furthermore democracy is civil war by non-violet means, so they can have that cake, i.e unending conflict, and eat it too. Two, they had a tyrant and a close call with an Iranian tyrant in Moktaqa Ibn Sadr. They choose to hang the first one and not follow the other. Three, and here is where I pretend to know something, there is an under current of political wisdom in the Arab world. One has to know ones way around in order to get around. The powers that be agree that homicide and tyranny are bad for business so there is a reason for responsible people to support a government that promotes peace and freedom.
And finally Iraqis seem to come equipped with printing presses. The US did not set up a mass of newspapers, magazines and radio stations with the invasion, the Iraqis did it by themselves. That argues well for a love of freedom. Throw it the world wide web, blogging, facebook and twitter and it looks like the traditional tyrant, the one who successfully controls the population because they cannot conceive of anything better may be on the way out.
I am afraid however of Obama pulling US combat troops out and leaving Iraq vulnerable to Syrian and Iranian invasion.
hm, i would echo the sentiments that i would not hold my breath for democracy in the middle east. i hope i am wrong (and still support the war cuz i think they needed their asses kicked) but the truth is that my mother is actually middle eastern believe it or not. I have a real hard time with her mindset a lot of the time, like she is very emotionally driven about everything, votes with her emotions, all that. and she holds grudges for 1000 years, heck her family is still mad at the ottoman empire for gosh sakes. there are just other little things like that, like little cultural things. she is so anti-american that she even hates the existence of toilet paper. very silly.
i was listening to rush one time and a soldier called up, and the soldier said that he thought middle east democracy was possible but the way he thought it would happen was with the re-education of the youth, and described how the iraqi school textbooks say such nonsense as iraq went to the moon and planted an iraqi flag on the moon.
as i said very silly.
Another grim milestone…
Yup. Everytime I do a post on Iraq and how the situation is improving I get the same comments from the same liberals warning darkly of this or that on the horizon. Not that there aren’t dangers still to face, but you’d think they’d temper their remarks given how wrong they were about the surge in 2007.
Well, nobody ever said representative government was a walk in the park. The Iraqis have no traditions of democracy. In fact Islam is not a very good fit with democracy. Look at Turkey. The only Islamic country with representative government and they have to continually beat back the Islamists attempts to take over.
One thing for sure – democracy is never safe and uneventful. Just look at this country. Constant fight to keep from sliding further toward progressive big government taking over. So, as chaotic as Iraq seems, the people there seem determined to make a go of it. They’ve got a rich and propserous future ahead if they do. More power to them!
Newsweek, which no longer pretends to be anything but a left wing opinion journal, has a current cover story about “Victory in Iraq” and to my surprise, the cover has a picture of George Bush.
Of course, Biden says this is a geat Obama administration triumph…after he steadily opposed starting it and waging it.
I wonder if Obama will ever admit that the surge worked…not that it matters. 😳
Tom.
If you’re addressing me, I am not a liberal warning darkly of failure in Iraq.
But if the Muslims are voting for repressive tyrannies–as far as their leverage allows–in the UK, Holland, and Sweden, why not in Iraq?
Now, I understand they don’t have enough votes in those countries, but such as they have go that way.
They insist on special accomodations to various characteristics of a repressive theocracy. They refuse to assimilate. The cops in the UK find community resistance to investigations of honor killing and disappeared young women.
Young women’s safe houses, refuge from family violence, are routinely revealed to the buttheads by Muslim cops who think it their religious duty.
Speaking as a devil’s advocate, why should Iraqis be different?
But then there is the picture by, I think, David Bellavia, whose unit was providing security for a voting location during the first election. The line was attacked by terrorists. One woman was shot in the head. As she lay dying, she asked for “papers”, meaning a ballot to hold as she died.
Nothing is as easy or as certain as it looks.
Good story Richard.
Starting and maintaining a democracy is historically difficult. The Iraqis seem on the right path. If they can last a generation it will be the beginning of the end of authoritarian government in the ME. Young (and internet savy) middle easterners will not their lives dominated by tyrants with a better way on display on their doorstep.
And George Bush would have been proven right.
IMHO
Note: the grown-ups at Defense always recognized that the war against terror is really a multi-generational war against the political culture of the middle east. Bush’s greatest failure as a war leader was to explain this this to the American public.
Bob.
Love to go along with your view.
But the second and third generations of Muslim immigrants to various European countries are the most radical. The educated ones, the ones with exposure to western values.
My wife teaches high school Spanish. Some years ago, one of her students, a good kid, superior student, Muslim with the full garb, daughter of SA professionals, did not want to study El Cid because it “demeaned her faith”.
The story of an eleventh-century skull buster, a mercenary, fighting for and against Christians, for and against Muslims, demeans her faith???
Well, he could have died of camp fever. He could have set up on his own and died surrounded by his grandchildren. But he cashed his last paycheck fighting against Muslims and was folded into the Matter of Spain, the story of the Reconquista.
This makes as much sense to us as somebody named Godwin or Godwinson claiming his family should be on the throne of England and nobody in the family will ever be named William–or Norman, I suppose–and they’re going to blow up a nursery school to make their point.
Problem is, it makes sense to the Muslims.
They are not like us. They do not think like us. To anticipate them reacting as we would react is going to get us into trouble.
Consider that ten percent of Muslims worldwide–the accepted figure for those angry at the West–amounts to more than the populations of Germany and Japan in 1940.
Look up Wretchard’s Three Conjectures.