Barry Farber
Friday, Jan. 28, 2005

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  But make no mistake: The elections on January 30 in Iraq are the biggest elections in a foreign country for Americans in history.

The elections in Iraq, I predict, will be hailed as a victory by the Bush administration and will be grudgingly admitted to have turned out surprisingly well for America even by those who oppose the administration.

The turnout will be larger than anticipated and the violence less.

For entertainment, provided that prediction is correct, study the faces of the nearest anti-Bushites if the Iraqi turnout equals the American turnout of last November 2. They will want to say "That's not enough of a turnout to legitimize the result," but how can they dare?

If as high a percentage of Iraqis turn out to vote as Americans did, how can anybody deny the message? Americans going to the polls are threatened with long lines and low wind-chills. Iraqis are threatened with being gunned down and blown up.

Why am I so optimistic? Do the math. There's a lot of bad news from Iraq. There's a lot of good news from Iraq. The American media seem to prefer emphasizing the bad news. The Iraqi elections will show how Iraqis feel, not how American leftists feel Iraqis ought to feel. And I think the result will surprise Americans (but not Iraqis).

King Abdullah of Jordan discommoded the Bush administration by openly and sharply criticizing the wisdom of the elections. His Majesty believes any fair election in an Arab country will be won by anti-Americans. I say, bring 'em on.

The important thing is not that they love Americans. The important thing is that they not allow their territory and resources to be used by jihadists to harm America. And something tells me that Iraq will not lend itself to the jihadists no matter which of Sunday's winners craft the new Iraqi constitution.

The Iraqi nation will develop a liking for us down the road as they realize the full weight of what we've done for them.

Other Arab leaders chimed in behind King Abdullah, saying a democracy needs a core "middle class," which no Arab country presently has. That's true, but also it's a shocking admission for nations with so much wealth and such a miserably unfair distribution thereof.

I've had cocktails with Molotov. (On the level!) I've been kissed on the cheek by Miss Norway. Neither adventure sent the nerve endings as apringle as being lectured on democracy by the king of Jordan!

Americans are an interesting people. When we promise ourselves there's a "light at the end of the tunnel," as we did in Vietnam, and no such light materializes, we obligingly don tailored robes of sackcloth and throw ourselves upon the ashes deployed upon the hardwood floor.

When, however, a feared and formidable rival like the Soviet Union pops out to the infield and leaves the arena, does any American say: "Wow! The light as we zoomed out of that tunnel almost blinded me"? Not within my earshot.

Be nice to the nearest Democrat. They need a lot of love. There's a Middle East proverb that teaches us "Good fortune favors the unlazy." I want to be character witness now for the Democrats. They've suffered the absolute worst fortune in timing we've ever seen; and it's not because they're lazy.

I'd love to think the political operatives of my personal preference have simply bested the Democrats in fair combat. Alas, I cannot. The Democrats have had incredibly bad luck to wind up where they are.

In the 2002 run-up to the invasion of Iraq the congressional Democrats clambered aboard the anti-Saddam "war" resolution so as not to antagonize the overwhelming post-9/11 consensus for action. They sank so deep therein that, even late in the presidential campaign, John Kerry stated that, yes, knowing what he knows "now," he would have voted for the authorization for war nonetheless.

Now here comes Sen. Ted Kennedy opposing the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice, fulminating that "her" Iraq war is "a catastrophic disaster." That came from Sen. Kennedy while Sunni leaders in Iraq were firing political retro-rockets seeking to have a role in the shaping of the new Iraqi constitution even though they earlier boycotted the elections and disdained any voting under "American occupation."

The New York Times and the Bush-hostile CNN both agreed that stance by the Sunni leadership seemed to indicate that the insurgents had failed to derail the Iraqi vote.

Democrats can kvetch about their "bad timing" for a long time without any move toward cloture by me. About a year ago former Vice President Al Gore took the stage of the Beacon Theater in New York and led a seminar on global warming on the coldest day in New York in memory. Result? Even pro-Gore, anti-Bush, pro-global warming commentators and publications ridiculed the seminar!

And it's not too late to touch down upon the anti-war Democrat contender Howard Dean. Please don't ratify wrongness by supposing Dean lost because of his untoward screech after the results of the Iowa Caucus.

My late mother taught me yet one more lesson in her last years that serves well for me – and, if your still reading, for you. I'd heard a spate of stories from close friends of their elderly relatives "falling down and breaking their hip." "No," informed Mama. "They don't fall down and break their hips. When they get old, their hips break and they fall!"

Howard Dean did NOT lose the Iowa Caucus because he screeched. He screeched because he lost the Iowa Caucus. And thereupon lost everything else to John Kerry.

To my thinking, the American left has disgraced itself by "riding" the insurgents and, in effect, rooting for them to kill Americans and Iraqis so the elections will be a failure. When Michael Moore rhapsodized the insurgents, he compared them to the American Revolutionaries and wished them well. Second lady Lynn Cheney gave the perfect answer when challenged with that quote on a TV show. "It depends," said Mrs. Cheney, "on who's fighting for freedom."

The anti-Bush Americans, to their eternal disgrace, are somehow paralyzed. They cannot find voice to attack the Iraqi insurgents EVEN THOUGH those insurgents have done history a favor by frankly admitting – no spin – that they hate democracy and think democracy is an "American lie"!

Wouldn't you think Sen. Ted Kennedy or some other – or ALL other – Democratic legislators would find a way to take a breath, then a sip of water, and then rail out against the democracy-hating insurgents?

There's great hand-wringing over the "impossibility" of bringing democracy to the Middle East. They say there's "no tradition" of democracy in the Middle East.

Excuse me. There was no tradition of democracy on the planet Earth until Americans started one. When I was a boy, the only democracy south of our border was Costa Rica. Today, the only dictatorship is Cuba.

After World War I the world ridiculed the attempt of the Czechs and the Slovaks to start a democracy out of the ruins of the defeated Hapsburg Empire. Guess what? It worked! And it kept working until Nazism and Communism overran it.

I say to the anti-Bushites, who I believe have disgraced themselves by failing to devote equal time to condemning the anti-democracy insurgents, exactly what Winston Churchill said to Adolf Hitler: "You do your worst, and we shall do our best!"

You enemies of President Bush have a point. There is no tradition of democracy in Iraq.

I say do what America did in the late 1700s, when there was no tradition of democracy anywhere on the planet: Start one!

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