The Real Democratic Uprising
The news this week that NATO strikes and Libyan rebels killed Muammar Gadhafi was a blip on the radar at the Ever Red State Network.
That’s mainly because this trumped-up conflict was nothing, if not nebulous, from the beginning.
For starters, Libya retreated from its adolescent posturing eight years ago, quaking in fear when US troops stormed into Baghdad and overthrew Saddam Hussein.
Gadhafi agreed to renounce Libya’s development of weapons of mass destruction the following year, and then became a global joke – a rambling, bizarre-looking head of state more deserving of the title “tail of state.”
Almost under their breath, one leftist rag had the temerity to acknowledge the real democratic uprising of the Middle East this week: Iraq’s first elections conducted entirely without US supervision or support.
William Shawcross of the UK Guardian did his best to tuck these horribly humiliating words at the very bottom of his story:
“Iraq may yet even become a model for democratic change in other Arab countries. If so, who deserves some credit? The much maligned President Bush. And Tony Blair.”
As Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow learned on Sunday, success is the best form of revenge. But the wisdom of George W. Bush and Tony Blair is hardly the juiciest morsel of vengeance in this article.
According to Shawcross, the Iraqi elections boasted none of the sectarian or ethnic boycotts of 2005, to include Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority.
Pause and start a drum roll in your head for all the Democrat politicians who said this would never happen – Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levin, Harry Reid, Jack Murtha, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, etc.
But we’re not finished.
Shawcross reports that ALL of Iraq’s Islamist parties lost parliamentary numbers, including radical backers of Moqtada Al-Sadr (eight percentage points). The Islamic Party of Iraq, the Sunni extremists, were wiped out completely.
(Again, drum roll and name-and-shame all the Democrats who said THAT would never happen, especially if we kept Guantanamo Bay open and escalated our military presence in the Middle East.)
The Guardian would not publish this if John McCain were president. It’s obvious that this is to persuade the paper’s leftist audience of what they already believe – the only way for the US to resolve the Iraq issue was to elect a left-wing leader.
But Shawcross reveals a glaring ignorance of who did the heavy lifting in this war – the US military, most of all, followed by coalition troops from all over the world.
Over 4,400 American soldiers died. Thousands more were wounded, and untold hundreds of thousands rotated in and out of Iraq throughout its eight-year campaign to ensure its success.
Not one US soldier was conscripted into service. None were forced to reenlist, although many did endure the hardship of stop-loss/stop-movement policies. No matter the impulse or reason to hesitate, Americans walked into US military recruiting offices year after year to end up in Iraq.
We know the futility and darkness of war.
We know the painful ignorance of non-participants to its grisly, monotonous and hopeless nature.
We know that lives get taken, ruined and changed irrevocably. The soldier does not walk a happy road when he is called upon to do his real job.
But at long last, with lackluster fanfare only an unconscionable leftist could muster, our perseverance and professionalism is vindicated. Publicly. In print. For the record.
For a US Army sergeant who fought in two tours of Operation Iraqi Freedom, it’s a prouder moment than you can imagine.
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