One of the first posts I ever did was directing to the article What if Bush is right? It seems that the results of the Iraqi election has made a convert out of Toronto Star Columnist Richard Gwyn.
...Here it is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language. That sentence is short and simple. It is this: Bush was right.
President George W. Bush wasn't right to invade Iraq. His justifications for doing so were (almost all of them) either frivolous, in comparison to the scale of the venture, or were outright fraudulent.
Having conquered Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein, Bush and his officials and generals then made every blunder that could be imagined by an occupying power, adding several original ones of their own.
But on the defining, fundamental question, Bush was right.
He understood that to defeat an idea, no matter how perverse and brutal it might be, it was necessary to have an opposite and superior idea.
He understood, in other words — instinctively rather than intellectually — that the only way to win a war against terrorism was to turn it into a war for democracy.
This is now happening. Against the quest of ordinary Iraqis for dignity and self-respect and freedom, the terrorists in Iraq had nothing ultimately to offer, except blood and hatred.
Already, Palestinians and Afghanis have made the same choice.
Inevitably, many others elsewhere in the Arab and Islamic worlds are going to start to wonder why those choices are still denied them.
It is not the beginning of the end. But some 3 1/2 years after the mass murders of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York and Washington, and then of all their successors, we may have reached the end of the beginning.
I agree with Mr. Gwyn that the War for Democracy is much more compelling rhetoric.
Update: It seems that many on the left are beginning to re-think their earlier stance on spreading freedom. SmallDeadAnimals links to article by Mark Brown wherein he states
...But after watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?
It's hard to swallow, isn't it?
...Obviously, I'm still curious to see if Bush is willing to allow the Iraqis to install a government that is free to kick us out or to oppose our other foreign policy efforts in the region.
So is the rest of the world.
For now, though, I think we have to cut the president some slack about a timetable for his exit strategy.
If it turns out Bush was right all along, this is going to require some serious penance.
Maybe I'd have to vote Republican in 2008.
In the last sentence he obviously got carried away!
Furthermore, this is taken from the National Review site (again thanks to SmallDeadAnimals)
JON STEWART MAY IMPLODE? [Tim Graham]Jon Stewart, late in the Daily Show last night to Newsweek pundit Fareed Zakaria: "I’ve watched this thing unfold from the start and here’s the great fear that I have: What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may, and again I don’t know if I can physically do this, implode. (Hat tip: David Frum).
