"Moral Bankruptcy, Not Moral Dissent"

[NATO AIR]

Every Ralph Peters column is a must-read, whether you want informed analysis or you're just there for how he dismembers the traitors and bush-haters in the midst....

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/58691.htm

IRAQ'S HISTORIC VOTE: DEMOCRACY'S POWER

By RALPH PETERS
December 16, 2005 -- WHERE were the "Pull our troops out now!" protesters yesterday, as 15 million voters from every ethnic and religious group in Iraq went to the polls to shape their country's future?

Surely, the anti-war crowd couldn't all have gone to the movies to see "Brokeback Mountain"?

The determination of Iraq's population to embrace their rough-and-tumble democracy is quite an embarrassment to those who predicted failure even before we marched on Baghdad. It's hard to insist that a massive voter turnout changes nothing.

Of course, few of those "anti-war protesters" are really anti-war. When Bill Clinton bombed Serbia, they cheered the use of military force. Our abandon-Iraq dissidents are driven by two things that have little to do with the situation in Mesopotamia.

First, they're just plain anti-Bush, closet authoritarians who have no more respect for the American voter than they do for the Iraqis. They long for voter rolls restricted to like-minded intellectuals — and a president who delivers his state-of-the-union address in French.

Which brings us to the second characteristic of the "declare failure" crowd: They don't much like democracy, no matter where it appears. Have any of those obsessed with giving Saddam a fair trial praised Iraq's attempt to build a democracy? Do they really believe that the millions who voted yesterday were better off under a brutal dictatorship? Was Saddam more humane and just than a free election?

Isn't it just plain racist to insist that Iraqis can't build a democracy? Not so long ago, our Democratic Party struggled to deny the vote to millions of Americans. Would today's critics prefer global Jim Crow laws for the billions beyond our shores?

One senses bitterness on the left that the terrorists didn't do more to disrupt the election. That isn't moral dissent — it's moral bankruptcy.

The America-haters will find their voices again. When the election results are announced, there's going to be plenty of bickering and, inevitably, allegations of fraud. Any slight irregularity will get the left excited, "proving" the vote was meaningless.

And let's face it: Even though the Iraqis have disappointed the American left again and again, they may fail to build an enduring, rule-of-law democracy. Much could still go wrong. But at least for now democracy exists where despotism prevailed for thousands of years. People whose hatreds go so deep that Americans can't fathom them are marking ballots, rather than turning to bullets.

There's no guarantee that Iraq's internal differences can be bridged, that those who've lost power will reconcile themselves to their changed status or that those who've gained authority won't abuse it. The best possible outcome will be far from perfect.

But must the standard be perfection, when we haven't even managed that ourselves? We're asking Iraqis to change not only their government, but their civilization, to overcome hatreds hallowed in torrents of blood.

And the Iraqis are trying. May God, by any name, assist their struggle.

Doesn't anyone on the left have the integrity to consider that, for all its deplorable faults, the Bush administration just might have done an admirable deed by giving 26 million souls a voice in their own future?

Our domestic left took sick leave during yesterday's election. They'll be back as soon as anything goes wrong. But Iraq's third and most-inclusive trip to the polls was a reality. No amount of spin and lies can change that.

The people of Iraq don't — and won't — love us. Except for the Kurds, they want to see the last of our troops at some point. Pride trumps gratitude in human affairs.

It will be enough if, on the day our last battalion furls its flag, age-old enemies have learned to respect the authority of the vote.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy."