Keep On Keepin' On

Fire of Liberty

While we have various politicians out there calling for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq or note (in the worst impersonation of CBS's Walter Cronkite I've ever seen) that the situation is "un-winnable," there are also others who see the matter in a different light. Looking through the press, I came across this piece by Gerard Baker over at The Times that provides an honest yet positive look at Operation Iraqi Freedom. While he admits there has been some obvious problems of the US and its coalition partners getting out of the starting blocks in Iraq but noted that the ongoing work has not only freed the Iraqi people from the iron fist of Saddam and put them on a path to become a democracy but has also been a catalyst for an explosion of freedom throughout the region. I particularly like these paragraphs in Baker's commentary:

This is a wholly understandable reaction. We'’re overwhelmed every day with the hard statistics of loss: Britain may soon endure its 100th death of a serviceman in Iraq; America has just passed the 2,000 mark; tens of thousands of Iraqis have perished. We have spent billions of dollars, not always efficiently. These are tangible, measurable losses; hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, billions.

Success is less tangible. It is articulated not in the indicative but in the subjunctive: potential threats removed; future wars that don'’t have to be fought. It is numbered in the unenumerable: the slow awakening of human freedom; the steady, incremental spread of dignity it brings to people cowed and trampled for decades.

And yet it leaves its mark in tangible ways, even in the turmoil of Iraq. In a couple of weeks, Iraqis will go to the polls in their millions for the third time this year (the exercise of democracy can be habit-forming, can'’t it?). This time they will choose a government that will have real power over the direction of the country. It will be a genuine first in the history of a region where medievalist tyranny has enjoyed five centuries of extra time.

Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein, the most powerful living expression of that legacy, the tormentor of his own people and oppressor of others, stands trial for his crimes.

And the success in Iraq, intangible as it is, was never just going to be confined to the country itself. Look at the broader map of the Middle East.

In neighbouring Syria, another unlovely old regime is cornered. The push for freedom that began in Iraq is steadily wresting Lebanon away from its status as a fief of Damascus. The Syrian dictator is feeling the painful consequences of his attempt to halt the spread of liberty by the old fashioned method of assassination.

In Iran, the proximity to a liberated Iraq is alarming the theocratic thugs who run the country and energising their enemies in the rest of the population.

I guess Dean and company are so preoccupied with the thought of enacting some kind of takeover of the Republican controlled Congress via their anti-Iraq, anti-Bush campaign that they're willing to sacrifice the success of our nation and the future of freedom in the Middle East. Maybe they should move away from focus groups and polls and focus more on standing by the President and this nation when its at war.