Michael Ledeen, writing in National Review, sounds for all the world like a leftist revolutionary from the 20th century, extolling the democratic will of the people and the overthrow of tyrannical regimes:
The two great elections of recent months were held in Iraq and Ukraine. In both cases, the conventional wisdom was wrong. The conventional wisdom embraced the elitist notion that neither the Ukrainians nor the Iraqis were "ready" for democracy, because they lacked one or another component of the so-called requirements for a free society. Their alleged limitations ranged from historical tradition and internal conflicts to a lack of education and culture and insufficient internal "stability." How I hate the word stability! Is it not the antithesis of everything we stand for? We are the embodiment of revolutionary change, at home and abroad. Most of the time, those who deplore a lack of stability are in reality apologizing for dictators, and selling out great masses of people who wish to be free. And even as those un-American apologists invoke stability, we, as the incarnation of democratic capitalism, are unleashing creative destruction in all directions, sending once-great corporations to history's garbage heap, voting once-glorious leaders into early retirement, and inspiring people everywhere to seek their own happiness by asserting their right to be free.
Leading to this stirring conclusion:
It would be an error of enormous proportions if, on the verge of a revolutionary transformation of the Middle East, we backed away from this historic mission. It would be doubly tragic if we did it because of one of two possible failures of vision: insisting on focusing on Iraq alone, and viewing military power as the prime element in our revolutionary strategy. Revolution often comes from the barrel of a gun, but not always. Having demonstrated our military might, we must now employ our political artillery against the surviving terror masters. The great political battlefield in the Middle East is, as it has been all along, Iran, the mother of modern terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and the prime mover of Hamas. When the murderous mullahs fall in Tehran, the terror network will splinter into its component parts, and the jihadist doctrine will be exposed as the embodiment of failed lies and misguided messianism.
The instrument of their destruction is democratic revolution, not war, and the first salvo in the political battle of Iran is national referendum. Let the Iranian people express their desires in the simplest way possible: "Do you want an Islamic republic?" Send Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel to supervise the vote. Let the contending parties compete openly and freely, let newspapers publish, let radios and televisions broadcast, fully supported by the free nations. If the mullahs accept this gauntlet, I have every confidence that Iran will be on the path to freedom within months. If, fearing a massive rejection from their own people, the tyrants of Tehran reject a free referendum and reassert their repression, then the free nations will know it is time to deploy the full panoply of pressure to enable the Iranians to gain their freedom.
Meanwhile, the idelogoues of the Left have traded places with their counterparts of the Old Right, and have become the new reactionaries, as pointed out by Ambient Irony on the eve of the elections in Iraq:
So thanks to President Bush and America, and their allies Britain and Australia (and quite a few other countries), 50 million people are now free.
But, says the left, but, this is actually a bad thing because he is not an idealist. Without that idealism, he is forced to take on the world as it actually is, so his bringing freedom to 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq counts for nothing.
The logic of this position is difficult to untangle, but this is how it looks to me:
Axiom: America bad.
Axiom: Conservatives bad.
Postulate: Anything done by bad people is necessarily also bad.
Therefore: If President Bush speaks in idealistic terms, he must be lying.
If he frees entire countries from tyranny, it must be from base motives, and he deserves only scorn.
If people in the government support him, they are only in it for money and power.
If voters support him, they are stupid.
Against the strident opposition of the Left, America has fought two wars of liberation since 2001. The only contribution of the Left to this effort has been negative: to slow things down, to make every effort more difficult, to give hope to insurgents and terrorists...
We - America, Britain, Australia, Poland, and more - we, personified if you need that by President Bush, we are fighting in Iraq and in Afghanistan to create, restore, and preserve freedom. Our enemies are fighting in the name of oppression, so long as they are the oppressors. It really isn't hard to work out.
But the Left will never give any credit to President Bush for this; he is a bad man (see axioms 1 and 2) so the war of liberation in Iraq is a bad thing.
He freed the people of Afghanistan, who are now rebuilding their country under a democratic government with universal suffrage.
Only because Halliburton wanted to build a gas pipeline!
There is no gas pipeline.
He freed the people of Iraq.
We only invaded Iraq because of the WMDs!
It was never only about WMDs.
But it was really just a lie so he could steal their oil!
The oil hasn't been stolen. Instead, enormous amounts of money have been spent to help rebuild the country.
Give him time, he'll steal it.
The elections are tomorrow.
Oppression! Forcing democracy on an unwilling people!
Back when all this mess started, I was arguing the point with some friends online. They were against the war, not trusting America's motives. I pointed out that removing the respective regimes (the Taliban, Saddam) was unquestionably good; the real question was what they were replaced with. Rather than opposing the war, they should be focusing on promoting democracy.
Needless to say, I got no takers.
And still the shrill cries arise from the swamps. Months after a successful election in Afghanistan, and with voting in Iraq just hours away, they still make their complaint. The war is bad - even if it brings peace, prosperity, and freedom to the liberated people - because President Bush is bad. If good things come from bad motives, then they are really bad things.
The invasion of Iraq was wrong, was always wrong, was based on greed and lies, has done nothing but harm, and we should leave now. America cannot be trusted, not now, not ever, and our enemies [Remember, the ones murdering election workers?] are upstanding and noble.
50 million people are free.
We live in a strange age in which the elections held in a country recently liberated from a monstrous and barbaric dictatorship were criticized because they resulted from an "imperialist intervention" by the "fascist US regime" - but terrorists attempting to destabilize that country and prevent popular elections through threats of violence are called "freedom fighters" and "Minutemen" by voices of the Left like last year's international media darling, Michael Moore.
The Left used to claim to be on the side of democracy and the will of the people (as long as those people weren't under Soviet domination), and against fascism and oppression. Now that the post 9/11 Right has taken up the cause of liberation (for admittedly self-interested and pragmatic reasons), the Left is suddenly on the side of "stability", even as dictatorships around the world are being shaken to their foundations.
When National Review supplants The Nation as the advocate for worlwide revolution, you know we are truly living in a different century.
(Hat tip: Rishon Rishon)
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