“Democracy Sinking In”
That’s the title of Austin Bay’s latest column and it’s a must read. Here are some of the best points Col. Bay makes:
On the day of the election, I received an email from an Iraqi reader. He’s a Sunni Arab, a businessman and by no means a public figure. While protecting his identity, I will note I visited his hometown while on active duty last year in Iraq.
His letter mixed excitement and pride with a touch of dread, as he noted that the constitutional process and election experience told him that “major players (in Iraq) are coming more and more to realize that dialogue, alliances, common interests and just plain politics are the way to win, not violence, intimidation and terror. So this (lesson) is apparently slowly ’sinking in’ in our confused and frightened Iraqi mentality.”
After coma-inducing John Kerry grumbles about all the failures he thinks President Bush has made in handling the war, it’s great to read a column about reality from a trusted journalist. The email that Col. Bay cites is uplifting because people are buying into the political progress and abandoning the insurgency efforts.
Another bit of good news in the violence front is that Syria isn’t likely to be exporting terrorists much anymore. They can’t afford to because Assad’s government is on shaky ground after getting ‘indicted’ in the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. With political and economic sanctions looming and with their economy in the tank, they’ll need military types to protect Assad.
Combining the diminishing Iraqi insurgency and the likely diminishing Syrian exporting of terrorists paints a fairly optimistic picture. I don’t want to paint a perfect picture because reality is that there’s still challenges left to meet. We still need to get the emerging Iraqi military trained, strengthened and bigger. We still need to see the Iraqis elect a permanent government and tweak their ratified Constitution.
Via global television, the entire planet will witness a Mesopotamian tyrant in the dock (talk about a historic first). Arabic-speaking audiences will need no translators, nor will their autocrats, as the tyrant is called to account for his crimes. Saddam will rant, but let the fool exhaust himself with bombast and bluster. The windbag act will only expose his weakness.
The pictures from that trial will reverberate throughout the Arab world and it won’t be good for recruiting new terrorists. Rest assured of this: That trial will impact the democracy movement even more than the original purple finger pictures last January 30th.
Something else is happening here, and it’s very noteworthy, and that is that the Arab world is noticing that wherever America is involved, peoples’ lives improve, tyrants are taken out of power, people get to choose their own path through life and women become equals to men. I’ll guarantee that that momentum won’t be stopped or slowed down. PERIOD.
After casting his constitutional referendum ballot, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said: “The constitution is a sign of civilization. This constitution has come after heavy sacrifices. It is a new birth.” Jaafari echoed comments I heard last year in Iraq. Several Iraqis told me they knew democracy was “our big chance.” One man said Iraq had the opportunity to “escape bad history”, and Iraq has a lot of bad history to escape.
There’s no time like the present to “escape bad history” than the present. Here’s to seeing Iraqis succeed.
Cross-posted at BoxerWatch