Perhaps it's not quite news that Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan is calling Iran and Syria out for the ruling regimes' attempts, through subterfuge and outright terrorism, to obstruct Iraq's democratization and carve the country up for themselves. Shaalan made similar statements in July and August of this year, and he's doubtless expressed more of the same. Good for him. Iraqi sympathies for the terrorists responsible for murderering hundreds of civic participants and innocent bystanders have always shown to be insubstantial, even in the Sunni Triangle, where fear and uncertainty appears to dictate day-to-day loyalties more than any sort of conviction. There is no "civil war," as an intellectually posturing Charles Krauthammer is currently claiming, but what has always been suspected: a witches' brew of former Ba'athist operatives, from commanders to secret police to Saddam's Sturmabteilungen, the Fedeyeen; foreign terrorists, including al Qaeda agents, whose tactics' adoption by Saddamites so quickly after major combat ended should prompt one to more closely examine the interchangeability of two ostensibly disparate groups; criminals, who were released by the thousands shortly before the Allied race to Baghdad; and foreign agents sent by neighboring powers, including Iran and Syria.
The latest batch of grim diagnoses seem drawn up out of boredom more than anything else. The most difficult test of democratic Iraqis' will came in April. That was the time for worry — many did. Authoritarians failed to destroy the new country; the lion's share of sovereign authority was given to Iraqis two months later. Now, Iraqis are concerning themselves with political competition, confusion, disagreement and uncertainty — as the Middle East Media Research Institute tells us, all the kinds of problems free societies face during every peaceful, popular change of leadership. And no amount of terrorist violence could prevent such an achievement. This hasn't gone unnoticed: Bill Kristol's and Austin Bay's reports reveal Iraqi democracy's communicable inspiration eroding the reigns of the very strongmen who seek to undermine it. An iron fist will rust.
Who's missing all of this? The left, convoluted in self-absorption beyond all intellectual and moral usefulness, and those whose misobservations confound as much as they reflect. From the Associated Press article on the Iraqi Defense Minister:
Shaalan may have been looking toward next month's polls, the first to be held since Saddam's capture a year ago.
It's been more than a year. Not once have Iraqis popularly chosen their leader in the eighty-three years since British partition. Political expression has been just as elusive. A military coup put down the Hashemite monarchy in 1958; the Ba'athists seized power in 1968 and Saddam Hussein assumed control in 1979. Dictatorships can only produce mockeries of what they import from democracies — Hussein was "president" and in 2002 he stood for an "election." But it was good enough for the AP. That the strongman's farce is acceptable to some confirms that the next decade will see two history books being written: one by those whose obsolete metric leaves them blinded to change and a second by those who divine policy from principle, and needed only to remind themselves of right three years ago.
AND: More sweeping changes in the Near East. Reactionaries will protest that these things were coming about before the fall of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, but then it's really the duty of a poor loser to split the unexpected boon from the unprecedented action he opposed.
WHAT I BEGAN WITH: President Bush echoed Shaalan's sentiments while at a press gathering with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. While one can justifiably complain that the Bush administration is too polite with Iraq's carnivorous neighbors, the White House is certainly growing more candid.
