by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
<\/em>Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n Fostering elections in Iraq is a hard road, well apart from the daily violence of the Sunni Triangle. The autocratic Sunni elite of surrounding countries prefers democracy to fail, warning us that an Iranian-sponsored theocracy will surely follow in Iraq, legitimizing a new Arab Khomeinism.<\/p>\n Sunni Iraqis want exemption from, or a delay of, the election\u2014even though they cannot or will not stop their own violence that imperils it. The United States earns very little credit abroad for its newfound dedication to democratic reform\u2014even as realists at home warn that we should instead back the status-quo who better guarantee order that purportedly favors our own national security.<\/p>\n There are rarely supporters of the hard road of promoting democracies abroad until they are well established. We learned that well enough both before and after the Afghanistan war. Many swore that the Taliban could not be removed. After their demise, new critics warned that the fascists could not be replaced with democrats\u2014and now suddenly they are mostly silent or indeed supportive of the new Afghanistan.<\/p>\n In the face of censure, the United States once bombed Christian Europeans in the Balkans to arrest an Islamic genocide, in hopes of stopping Milosevic and ushering in a democracy. Greeks and Russians were furious. The Arab world offered little thanks that we saved their fellow Muslims. Europeans who had watched the carnage on their doorstep for a near decade whined about our heavy-handed bombing. But perseverance in pursuit of principle\u2014perhaps the Clinton administration’s most controversial hour\u2014saved thousands of lives and gave the Balkans a chance at consensual government.<\/p>\n America’s calls for fair elections in the Ukraine only alienated a far more powerful Russia. The Putin administration remonstrated that Russia is the world’s largest oil producer and a similar victim of mass terrorism and thus an ally in our war. Yet the Ukraine now has a fairly elected leader, and we proved that America is not anti- Russian, but rather pro-democratic.<\/p>\n We are at last pressing Saudi Arabia for internal reform in the knowledge that their monarchy is a fertile ground for religious fascists who manipulate understandable popular discontent against the monarchy for their own Islamic agendas. These efforts at promoting Western-style democracy are either slurred as cultural chauvinism against Arabs or dismissed as criminally naive idealism that will ensure a far worse anti-American theocracy\u2014supposedly a lose-lose proposition.<\/p>\n Yet a day will come when it is recognized that the American withdrawal of 10,000 troops from the Wahhabi state was a wise move\u2014and should be followed by sober reassessment of American subsidies to the Mubarak dynasty in Egypt that is heading toward to a crisis of succession.<\/p>\n America was castigated for isolating Yasser Arafat. However, this ostracism ensured at Arafat’s passing that he was not a messianic figure, but generally felt to have been an obstacle to open elections that are moving ahead. So the United States was attacked for shunning a dictatorial nationalist, but never thanked for opposing the corruption and authoritarianism that had ruined the Palestinian state.<\/p>\n In all these cases, the preference for the status quo offers short-term stability, while the principled insistence on consensual government proves risky and hinges on unproven reformers. Yet in the long-term, America has rarely gone wrong for being on the democratic side of history. Japanese today are not angry with us because decades ago we insisted that women vote there. Nor are Germans furious that we opposed Soviet expansion through an elected rather than a puppet Bonn government.<\/p>\n The war-torn Europeans understandably bristle at the option of using force for democratic change, but if Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Bosnians, Kosovars, Afghans and Iraqis had counted only on the EU’s much vaunted utopian soft power, then they would be still under dictators. If in World War II Americans had acted as the present-day European Union does now, there would probably be no European Union today.<\/p>\n Most Americans rightly lament past Cold War support for strongmen\u2014with little acknowledgement that thousands of Soviet missiles pointing at the United States once narrowed the parameters of principled action. Moreover, if it was mistaken once to support autocrats, then it is surely right now to rectify, rather than abdicate from, that wrong.<\/p>\n The world after September 11 has reminded us of three other lessons as well. Democracies rarely attack each other and thus the greater the number of them, the less likely is war itself. Citizens vent better through ballots than bullets. And freedom is innate to all born into this world rather than the sole domain of the West.<\/p>\n If the past is any guide to the future, that hard road to democracy in the Middle East will create as much immediate chaos and caricature of President Bush’s new idealism as it does enduring stability and eventual praise\u2014but only long after he is gone.<\/p>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Fostering elections in Iraq is a hard road, well apart from the daily violence of the Sunni Triangle. The autocratic Sunni elite of surrounding countries prefers democracy to fail, warning us that an Iranian-sponsored theocracy will surely follow in Iraq, legitimizing a new Arab Khomeinism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[792],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-19W","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4490,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fight-over-flight-staying-power\/","url_meta":{"origin":4460,"position":0},"title":"Fight Over Flight: Staying Power","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson The New Republic With the increasing violence leading up to this week's Iraqi elections for 275 seats in a new national assembly, a despair emerged in some U.S. circles that 150,000 American troops and their coalition allies could never really maintain security. If one could not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2005"","block_context":{"text":"February 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/february-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3894,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/free-at-last\/","url_meta":{"origin":4460,"position":1},"title":"Free at Last","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 6, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Commentary Magazine A review of\u00a0The Foreigner\u2019s Gift:\u00a0The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraqby Fouad Ajami (Free Press, 400 pp) The last year or so has seen several insider histories of the American experience in Iraq. Written by generals (Bernard Trainor\u2019s Cobra II, with Michael\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3488,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-good-news-is-no-news\/","url_meta":{"origin":4460,"position":2},"title":"When Good News Is No News","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There's an old expression about war: \"Victory has many fathers, while defeat is an orphan.\" But in the case of Iraq, it seems the other way around. We've blamed many for the ordeal of the last four years, but it is the American\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2007"","block_context":{"text":"November 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/november-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7605,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/melancholy-lessons-from-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":4460,"position":3},"title":"Melancholy Lessons from Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine The unfolding collapse of Iraq\u2019s government before the legions of al Qaeda jihadists is the capstone of Barack Obama\u2019s incompetent and politicized foreign policy. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), armed with plundered American weapons and flush with stolen money, is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Bombed_out_vehicles_Aleppo-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4126,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/standoff-in-iraq-the-ied-vs-democracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":4460,"position":4},"title":"Standoff in Iraq: The IED vs. Democracy","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 24, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The insurgency in Iraq has no military capability either to drive the United States military from Iraq or to stop the American training of Iraqi police and security forces \u2014 or, for that matter, to derail the formation of a new government. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2006"","block_context":{"text":"February 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/february-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3678,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/anatomy-of-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":4460,"position":5},"title":"Anatomy of Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"How did we get to this baffling scenario? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It\u2019s make it or break it in Iraq in 2007. Or so we are told, as America nears four years of costly efforts in Iraq. But how did we get to this situation, to this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2007"","block_context":{"text":"March 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/march-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4461,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460\/revisions\/4461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}