The terror masters' sowing of doubt in the West continues. On Thursday, I remarked that "Over the last ten days many on the left and a few on the right have fallen for this impression, declaring the country hostile or barbaric or otherwise hopeless." This despite ample evidence to the contrary, wherein the majority of Iraqis are not engaged against the Allies; that their worst sin has been falling back into the fearfulness and passive complicity they knew for thirty years. A trend of bet-hedging continues in an embarrassing, at times shameful procession of parties protecting their immediate assets at an uncertain juncture in the democratization of Iraq and the assertion of liberty in troubled lands. Yesterday, while a majority of editors at National Review stuttered an admission of "lower expectations" (redeemed only by Victor Davis Hanson's and Rich Lowry's intrepid work), John Kerry announced his ambivalence on one hand to the freedom of Iraqis and on the other the concept that terrorism can only be permanently extinguished by free, civil societies. Today, Charles Krauthammer waxes agnostic, lauding the goal of a liberally democratic Iraq but warning its realization as possibly "unrealistic." Mickey Kaus, who seems one of few journalists to catch John Kerry's gag-worthy reversion to his defining principles, still draws a distinction, gauging that "I'm not saying Kerry's remarks will cost him votes. They certainly demonstrate a realism that contrasts with Bush's troubling idealistic certitude."

Therein lies the disconnect, one based on understanding who exactly has caused unrest in Iraq. All of Iraq, or, as I said Thursday, "The men fighting against the Allies aren't the ones we meant to be free; they're the very men from whom the Allies must liberate the Near East." Iraq did not collapse into civil war in the first week of April after such hype by liberation opponents and political pragmatists; bothersomely, they have not only failed to make retractions but have pressed further, constructing the strawman of wholesale Iraqi hostility. Al-Sadr's popularity has gone from marginal to nil; he has been juggling plea bargains since just three days from the beginning of his limp intifada. The Fallujan brew of Syrians, Iranian, Ba'athists and other vermin have met an incredible military defeat at the hand of American Marines. Thanks to the Marines' continuing work, the fervor of this favorite recruiting center during the Saddamite reign has not spread.

But somehow this has translated into a incapacity for civil society by the Iraqis. Who didn't realize that every local and regional power would invade Iraq — subtly, like cowards — to destablize it? I did realize it, and said so immediately after the fall of the Ba'athists, a week after even Wesley Clark was writing poetic exhortations. Did the Bush administration underestimate their enemies' efforts to undo the liberalization of Iraq? Perhaps; the center-left [and rightist Weekly Standard] generally blames the Department of Defense and a claimed shortage of troops (though I've yet to actually hear any general recommendations on deployment), while the larger right blames the State Department's hobbling of expatriate groups and advance teams. As I wrote on Wednesday, the Allies' neutral (and ultimately congenial) relationship with Iraqis made it (and makes it) politically awkward to establish as stern or as comprehensive a reformation regime as Japan; an account which still stands as the closest example of an American-led, top-to-bottom democratization, as well as the epitome of asserted, forced democracy.

The disconnect continues along a line to expectations: what did each side of the debate expect to see one year later? Though dismayed by the persistence of terrorist activity, I certainly did not expect to see a perfectly stable country. We need to ask ourselves: if we knew that Iraq's neighbors would likely try to carve it up, can we accept that this infant malady — the opportunism of early democracy — will take longer than one year to end? And all this ignores the country's growth, only slowed by violence. A return to prewar levels of electricity alongside exponential increases in medical care, public welfare and employment, to cite a few figures, cannot and should not be dismissed. Polling has consistently shown a country that is optimistic about its future and eager to reach it both autonomously and democratically. Have we forgotten already how many opponents of the war — on top of their other ludicrous claims of Old Testament calamity and woe — waved off assertions of Iraqis' aspirations, accusing the Bush administration of preparing to install another dictatorship?

And now many of the same people are suggesting just that: Leave the whole because of the acts of a few, even less of whom were a part of the oppressed Iraqi masses. (It is no coincidence that the Saddam-brutalized Kurds are the most eager about their new life and the countries that made it possible.) Outrageously, this desertion is being sold as "realism." Since when did pessimism become realism? Considering that the "stable" nations of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia contribute both directly and indirectly to the culture and/or operation of Islamist terrorism — among volumes of other evidence for another day — how would a non-democratic Iraq be preferable? If it wouldn't be, how is the abandonment of democratization realism - and not pessimism? In fact, it seems fanciful to think that terrorism will vanish if the West packs up and leaves the Near East pretty much the way they found it in 2001. As David Frum and Richard Perle said in a January Wall Street Journal op-ed, "The Soft-Line Ideologues":

In their devotion to the U.N., their belief in the efficacy of international law, and their nostalgia for the alliances of the Cold War (and Gulf War I), the soft-liners cling to exploded illusions about the way the world should work.

...When William James and Charles Pierce coined the term "pragmatism" 150 years ago, they meant something more than mere "practicality." James and Pierce were making a point about the nature of "truth." Truth, they argued, isn't some transcendent thing that exists beyond human experience. Truth is found right here on earth. If belief in an idea leads to positive results, then the idea is true; if belief in an idea leads to negative results, then it is false.

September 11th proved that benevolent dictatorship is a farce, roundly "negative results" for policy that was hailed as pragmatism. Democratic nations are peaceful nations, reluctant and conscientious in the making of war. Despite the fact that all democratic civilizations ascended from codified barbarity, Iraq's strongman past is held as a black mark. Yet contrary to the claim, neither Germany nor Japan had robust "democratic traditions" before democracy was thrust upon them; unless we are content to dilute the definition, a democratic society is a thing that never was if it isn't now.

I have nothing to lose with an unreserved conviction that Iraqis can construct and maintain a pluralist democracy, a graded curve with errors and self-constructed obstacles that will be far better than any dictatorship, one that sets us all right back to where we started from. If I am damned to be wrong, better to believe in Man's self-determination than betray it to grim skepticism. President Bush is right to keep his "idealistic certitude," for, National Review failed to point out, he has gone a step beyond Woodrow Wilson. Wilson once said, "I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people," adherence to a widely carried denial that brought the Second World War.