Yesterday, for the first time in their history, Iraqis went to
the polls to exercise one of the most basic rights of a free
people. They voted despite the U.N.’s failure to help, despite
liberals’ predictions of disaster, and — most importantly —
despite the terrorist declaration that democracy cannot exist in an
Islamic society. The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, declared that those who vote in democratic elections
are “apostates,” the Islamic term for those who violate Islam’s
laws and advocate competing religions. Zarqawi’s meaning was clear:
that Islam requires its believers to accept religious dictators as
their only legitimate leaders. When the Iraqis went to the polls in
droves — many losing their lives to do it — they rejected
Zarqawi’s message and opened a gaping wound in the jihadist
ideology.
The Iraqi election is a milestone in the war against terrorism,
but whether it is a major victory won’t be known for years to come.
Yesterday’s election was only to select a provisional national
assembly (and leadership) that will, over the next year, draft a
permanent constitution for Iraq that will be presented to the
voters. Whether the assembly succeeds, or whether the insurgents
prevent it, are still open questions. But the turnout among Iraqi
voters — something over 70% — shows that the insurgents do not
have the popular support that’s necessary for them to win.
No matter how many times Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, and John
Kerry insist otherwise, Iraq looks more like 1945 Germany than 1972
Vietnam. One of the reasons we’ve had so little success in
establishing effective Iraqi security forces has been the fact that
before soldiers and policemen will risk their lives, there must be
a something for them to swear loyalty to. Until yesterday, there
was nothing in Iraq for them to swear allegiance to other than the
tribal, ethnic, and religious groups that have comprised Iraq from
its birth, or the American-appointed Allawi government. Now, even
though the national assembly is temporary, it is Iraqi: chosen by
Iraqi voters themselves and not appointed by an outside power or
imposed by a home-grown despot. It is such things that soldiers and
policemen can claim to be their own and willingly risk their lives
to defend. Difficulties remain, but one of the biggest obstacles to
creating a self-sustaining and self-protecting Iraq has just been
overcome.
IT WOULD BE AN ENORMOUS mistake for us to withdraw from Iraq, or
even establish a date to do so. On Sunday evening I had the bizarre
pleasure of debating this point on MSNBC with Rep. Lynn Woolsey
(D-Calif. Need you even ask?) who said that we need to take our
soldiers out of Iraq now and let Iraq’s neighbors come in to help.
This member of the Democrats’ Von Braun Caucus apparently thinks
that Syria, Iran. and Saudi Arabia are chafing at the bit to help
Iraqi democracy rise above the Halliburton-driven U.S. occupation.
She thinks the terrorists won’t be mad at us anymore if we replace
our troops with peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers.
Fortunately, no one outside of northern California knows or cares
who Ms. Woolsey is, far less what she thinks.
The insurgents — now unable to escape the label “enemy of the
Iraqi people” — are still supported by Syria, Iran, and Saudi
Arabia. Those despotisms realize that their days are numbered if
Iraqi democracy succeeds. They will become increasingly desperate
to make the Iraqi democracy fail, and we will have to be in Iraq to
protect it from them for the foreseeable future. President Bush is
correct in saying that the election creates momentum behind the
Iraqi democracy experiment. But momentum can be lost if we quit too
soon. That is one of the central points we will hear on Wednesday
when Mr. Bush delivers his State of the Union address. And it is
one that the Democrats and their holy of holies - the U.N. — can’t
bring themselves to answer.
President Bush will call for more nations to come to the aid of
the fledgling Iraqi democracy. He will praise the sacrifices of our
real allies, challenge the U.N. and all its members to support
freedom with economic aid, with engineers, construction crews, and
all those things needed to put Iraq on its feet. They will smile
politely, applaud feebly, and again ignore his call to action.
Yesterday, on Meet the Press, John Kerry said over and
over again that the road to success in Iraq depends on our
obtaining the support of the “international community,” by which he
means the U.N. and Old Europe. President Bush realizes — as the
American people did in choosing to reelect him — that we cannot
depend on the EUnuchs and the despots and dictators who make up
three-quarters of the U.N.’s membership to do anything to fight
terrorists and the nations that back them. To take any risk to
support democracy in Iraq would be too much for Kofi Annan, because
he doesn’t want President Bush to succeed in what Annan called an
“illegal war.” The U.N. and Old Europe are too busy to help. The
first thing on their agenda is still constraining the United States
in this war. Convincing them — or the democrats — to do otherwise
is simply impossible.
THE PRESIDENT WILL SOON ASK Congress for a supplemental
appropriation of $80 billion for Iraq. (Five billion of it is for
the State Department’s efforts there which are, to be charitable,
hard to discern.) The Democrats will fight against the
appropriation, seeking to leverage some plan for withdrawal of our
forces before the job is done. They have obviously missed the
lesson the election taught former senator Tom Daschle:
obstructionism is not a policy. But they will obstruct as best they
can, on the funding for the war and on everything else the
President seeks to do.
George Bush can’t win the global war against terrorism by the
time he leaves office in 2009. But he can — as the Iraqi election
proves — make enormous progress toward victory. In his State of
the Union speech, the president should issue a call to all Islamic
nations to follow the example of Iraq. The sooner those nations are
rid of jihadism and religious dictatorships — by us or by their
own peoples — the sooner the war against terrorists and their
ideology will be won. There is every reason to be skeptical that
the Islamic nations can reform themselves. But as more of their
people see what freedom looks like, the momentum the President sees
in Iraq will grow, and — so long as we stand ready to help — grow
fastest in places where it is least welcome.
TAS contributing editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than
You Think (Regnery, 2004).
