Good suggested one liner from NR writer Kathryn Jean Lopez. The Iraqi government's rate of getting things done has compared favorably with that of the US Congress for sometime now. Think what the headlines would be if Maliki had shut out the lights on Iraqi legislators who were asking for a vote on a major national problem.
This brings up something that has long been striking to me: the contempt that many in the media and others who have opposed the war in Iraq have shown for the efforts of the Iraqis to institute a democracy. It is really quite shocking sometimes when one catches the tone of dismissive disbelief at the idea the Iraqis are capable of democracy. The partisan incentive to do so may be obvious enough, but it is still rather extraordinary to hear people that in large part seem to define their sense of political virtue by their opposition to racism and political inequality to be so openly contemptuous of a third world country's attempts at setting up democratic institutions.
It is one thing to say before the fact that setting up a democracy "at gunpoint" in a third world country is unlikely to succeed or at least may not be worth the cost, quite another to be openly contemptuous of the people that are trying to make it succeed and are risking their lives to do so. They sound like Winston Churchill snorting scorn on the idea that the Indians could conduct a democracy. In Churchill's case, though, the alternative to Indian liberal government was equally or perhaps more liberal (or at least competent, non-genocidal) government at the hands of the British. And, moreover, once the battle had been lost from his perspective and the Indians were in charge he didn't try to undermine the exercise.
This brings up something that has long been striking to me: the contempt that many in the media and others who have opposed the war in Iraq have shown for the efforts of the Iraqis to institute a democracy. It is really quite shocking sometimes when one catches the tone of dismissive disbelief at the idea the Iraqis are capable of democracy. The partisan incentive to do so may be obvious enough, but it is still rather extraordinary to hear people that in large part seem to define their sense of political virtue by their opposition to racism and political inequality to be so openly contemptuous of a third world country's attempts at setting up democratic institutions.
It is one thing to say before the fact that setting up a democracy "at gunpoint" in a third world country is unlikely to succeed or at least may not be worth the cost, quite another to be openly contemptuous of the people that are trying to make it succeed and are risking their lives to do so. They sound like Winston Churchill snorting scorn on the idea that the Indians could conduct a democracy. In Churchill's case, though, the alternative to Indian liberal government was equally or perhaps more liberal (or at least competent, non-genocidal) government at the hands of the British. And, moreover, once the battle had been lost from his perspective and the Indians were in charge he didn't try to undermine the exercise.
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