Liberals can’t seem to run enough “half empty” reports on Iraq. Lately we’ve been hearing that Iraq’s first elections may be less than fully free, that, say, only 60% of the nation will be able to participate. For a while we’ve been hearing about the power outages, and we sure did hear about it when the US death toll in Iraq reached 1000. What you won’t hear from a liberal is that if Iraqi elections are 60% free, then they will be 60% freer than they ever were under Saddam! And the reason they’re having power outages? Because they’re using more power than they ever have before. And the death toll is a historically low number as far as toppling entire regimes goes. A recent poll by the International Republican Institute found that 51% of Iraqis feel their country is on the right track, 31% the wrong track. The situation for the people of Iraq is good and improving, and certainly it’s better than it ever would have been under Saddam.
The liberals’ vehement opposition to Iraq, and stubborn unwillingness to admit any benefit from the operation, is almost enough to blow your mind until you think of what a success in Iraq means to their foreign policy positions.
A free Iraq will mean that democracy actually can take hold in a Middle Eastern country. A free Iraq will no longer be a breeding ground for terrorism. Indeed, a brief look at the countries that terrorists come from reveals that liberal democracy is terrorism’s antidote. And in a free Iraq human rights will be respected to a greater extent than they ever were under Saddam.
The kicker is that all these positives are the result of a staunchly right-wing foreign policy. We didn’t get specific UN approval for this operation that was largely motivated by a desire to protect our own self interest. Our superior firepower and technology allowed us to keep Iraqi civilian casualties and ours at historically low levels. And this action was instigated against a regime that had not specifically attacked us.
In short, success in Iraq would vindicate all the means that liberal foreign policy decries, and that makes the liberals’ blood boil.
So the next time you hear someone carp about how dire the situation is in Iraq, think about what he has to lose if a free Iraq succeeds.