`God save thee, ancient Mariner !
From the fiends, that plague thee thus !–
Why look’st thou so ?'–With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
Forty-eight hours from now, America and our allies will have brought democratic elections to a second former dictatorship in less than one year. While the media elite, acadmic snobs, and run of the mill liberal whiners want to pass this election off as a hoax, the historical significance cannot b overstated: the liberations of Aghanistand and Iraq begin the 21st century’s march of freedom.
Think back to the turn of the last century. Various ideas of slavery began taking root. Empires spread and conjoined like bacteria merging to beome dangers to more complex species. Ten years in, Europe moved quickly toward war as the Kaisar sued for Living Room. To the east of Germany, a particularly odious brand of despotism captured the imagination of Vladimir Lenin. He used the first world war as a springboard to enslaving half of Europe as fascism spread through Germany, Spain, and Italy betwee the wars.
By 1939, all the world was at war, save for Switzerland and a few idiots in American universities who believed in pacificism the way the ancient mariner believed in the power of the albatross. Half a million Americans died fighting to liberate Europe and the Pacific Rim–the countries who now peer down their noses at our “belligerence.” These are modern incarnations of the people who had no personal gripe with Hitler–nor Ho Chi Minh. They have no gripe with terror nor tyranny nor torture nor rape. Would these people, who supported Saddam’s regime by vilifying George Bush, convict Johnny Johnson? Johnny Johnson lured a little girl to an abandoned glass factory where he raped her before killing her with a brick to the head. What did Johnson do to humanity that Saddam didn’t?
But in forty-eight hours, Providence breaths into the Middle East the wind of self-determination, for both a nation and her individual citizens. Already those citizens exercise their freedom, some in pursuit of happiness, others in the pursuit of mayhem and murder. In the end, good will prevail. The murders will die by the sword they introduced, even as Zarqawi’s men fall to Iraqi authority by the day. Soon the Iraqis will have elected their own legislature, giving them the same right as Americans to complain about the quality of governance they themselves chose.
Ah, freedom . . . republic . . . democracy!
UPDATE: Lord, I forgot the piece that inspired this one–from my hero, William F Buckley
This story is part of the Beltway Traffic Jam
INDC Journal has a moving story
For a central clearinghouse of pre-election blog news, see Steven Taylor’s Poliblog
Here’s a worthwhile analysis of democracy in Iraq
UPDATE: I just took another whirl around the DNC/Lefty sites. I wonder if there were this many supposedly “good” people cheering against us with such bravado two days before our first election? I hope the new Iraq remembers who its friends were.