The platforms all support:
*Creating a democratic, egalitarian, and federal system of government that guarantees the political freedoms of the various ethnic and religious groups.
*Ending the occupation (with various degrees of urgency).
*Building a strong but non-political army that protects the country's borders.
*Preserving the Arab-Muslim identity of the country.
*Putting an end to terrorism.
*Supporting a bigger role for women in politics.
*Assuring non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries.
*Addressing economic reconstruction with various degrees of specificity and detail.
*Fighting growing corruption in government.
[end snip]
Wow -- this list of priorities strikes me as being incredibly sensible and healthy, especially for a nation just emerging from years of darkness under Saddam. There's no way these kinds of democratic, egalitarian ideas could just spring forth fully formed and become popular with the people in the short period since Saddam was deposed. These ideas must have been simmering just beneath the surface for decades. Someone was keeping the flame, so to speak. The Iraqi expatriate community had been urging for years that Saddam be overthrown, saying that Iraq wanted its freedom and would be ready for it. Maybe they were right. On the day before the elections, I'm trying to keep my expectations under control, but wow, this kind of stuff is encouraging.
Absolutely! Prior to Saddam's overthrow, the Bush administration had extensive meetings with Iraqi resistance elements, not only to determine what level of support there would be for a U.S.-led multinational invasion but also to get a sense of what would be possible under a post-Saddam democratic Iraq. There are many highly-educated Iraqis who hold the same values of freedom and democracy as does the rest of the West and free world, and these brave people, for the first time in their lives and the first time in Iraq's history, are able to exercise these values in the public square.
Despite what the Left / Dems / MSM tell us, we are living in a glorious, magical time that will echo through eternity. Iraq will serve as the first domino of freedom and justice in the Arab and Middle Eastern chain, which is why the despotic rulers of other regimes are utterly terrified of these elections and will do anything in their power to interfere. If we and our new Iraqi friends will have the courage to stay the course, Iraq will serve as a bright beacon of hope to the rest of the downtrodden and oppressed Middle East. When people who are gasping under the iron bootheel of Islamofascist oppression see happy, free people just over the border, they are not going to put up with their own suffering for long.