Posted on 01/31/2005 4:06:50 PM PST by Pokey78
Driving along and twiddling the radio dial on Sunday night, I caught this tantalising snippet: "In Madrid, demonstrators took to the streets to protest the Iraqi election." I'm fairly blasé about European decadence these days - I barely raised an eyebrow at the news that an unemployed waitress in Berlin faces the loss of her welfare benefits because she's refused to take a job as a prostitute in a legalised brothel - but, even so, it surely couldn't be true that the Spaniards so objected to the Iraqi election that they were protesting about it.
But apparently so. Hard to tell how many there were from the Reuters snap: it was shot fairly close up, the way sympathetic photographers do when they want to make a rally look bigger than it is.
But nevertheless there they were, prosperous, well-dressed Spaniards waving placards showing US missiles and dollar bills going into the ballot box and noisily objecting to the fraud of a so-called election held under American occupation.
Given the fact that the voters of Baghdad and Basra and Kirkuk showed the cojones the Spaniards failed to last March, you'd think those protesters would have been less careless about reminding us that the terrorists got a much better election result out of the Spanish electorate than they did from the Iraqis.
Musically speaking, I'm not really a big fan of Francis Scott Key's Star-Spangled Banner with its awkward prosody and melisma-clogged penultimate line, but the lyric does contain one big idea - that a "land of the free" has to be also, at some level, a "home of the brave".
Unlike Afghanistan, where Pashtuns and Uzbeks and Tajiks and pretty much every other ethnic group helped get rid of the Taliban, in Iraq non-Kurds mostly sat out the liberation of their country, staying in their homes and watching coalition forces ride through town and on to Baghdad. It was not a heroic moment for them.
But Sunday was. Defying the suicide bombers and head-hackers, courageous Iraqis went to the polls in huge numbers. Before the vote, the naysayers told us that the indelible purple dye on each voter's finger would mark them out for punishment by "insurgents". Instead, it became a defiant symbol of the country's freedom.
I liked the picture of some grizzled beaming Arab so proud of his purple finger that he dipped a second one and then raised both to the camera - flipping the V sign, or so I like to think, to the BBC, to Sir Simon Jenkins, to Do-Nothing Doug Hurd, to those Spanish protesters and the rest of the quagmire fetishists. Even the most benign liberator can't "give" liberty to someone: you have to want it, and take it for yourself. This Sunday, Shia and Kurds and even the savvier Sunnis seized it.
Iraq was a home of the brave this weekend and will be a land of the free.
Three years ago, Jonathan Kay of Canada's National Post observed that if Robert Mugabe turned up at an Arab League meeting he'd be the most democratically legitimate leader in the room. That's no longer true. And that's the real significance of what's been happening in Iraq, from the municipal elections last year to this vote to the constitutional assembly.
Like a four-year-old child, the media were so distracted by bright colours and loud noises that they missed the real story. Set fire to a second-hand Nissan and they send a camera crew round to take pretty pictures of the big plume of smoke rising up in the sky.
But the seeds of a democratic culture are harder to spot. The most fascinating detail in the big picture was this: Iraqi expats weren't voting just in Sydney and London and Los Angeles, but also in Syria. Think about that. If you're an Iraqi in Syria, you can vote for the political party of your choice. If you're a Syrian in Syria, you have no choice at all. Which of those arrangements is the one with a future?
"It is just a question of time before we take control of our destiny and for all Syrians to return to Syria to choose a new leadership capable of bringing Syria into the 21st century," says Dr Mohammed al-Ghaida of the Reform Party of Syria. His father heads a tribe in the north of the country, two-thirds of whom are members of the Reform Party. What are the chances of President-for-Life Assad serving out the remainder of his term? The events of this weekend are already rippling on to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and beyond.
In Europe and North America, the western Left have got on the wrong side of this movement. Shame on them - particularly those who've accused me of "Islamophobia" these last three years; I'm not the one marching in the streets against Muslim democracy and insisting that Arabs much prefer the "security" of dictatorship.
In contrast to the inspirational images from Quagmire Central this weekend, in Europe you can find a few Spaniards brave enough to go into the streets and sneer at Iraqi voters and the moronic Bush, but mustering the courage for anything else is harder. On Sunday night the scheduled attraction at the Rotterdam Film Festival was Submission Part One, a short film about a Muslim woman forced into an arranged marriage to be beaten by her husband and raped by her uncle.
The film's director, Theo van Gogh, was subsequently murdered by Islamists, and the screening was supposed to be part of a debate on freedom of expression. Instead, it was cancelled at the last minute for "safety reasons".
If Theo van Gogh hadn't been killed, he'd doubtless already be working on Submission Part Two, a short film set backstage at a European film festival about a Western culture so reflexively craven that nothing can rouse it to defend itself. Submission Part Three will be about the first Muslim woman to have her unemployment benefit cut for refusing a job as dominatrix in a Frankfurt bondage dungeon.
The Western media might want to rethink their basic narrative: the Iraqi people just took a great leap forward. It's Europe that's looking more like an unwinnable quagmire.
Oh, No kidding. And two Steyn columns in one day almost made me shortcircuit with his shock and awe prose.
This guy is just amazing.
Could someone translate this for me?
That was two trips to the dictionary for me in one sentence.
Loving Mark Steyn bump
Steyn even helps us improve our vocabulary.
I love the melisma of the penultimate line!
And consider - the people of Baltimore had seen the red sky of Washington burning earlier in the summer, knew that the British would be coming for them, made the best preparations that they could, and then had to watch the bombardment of the fort on a Saturday night.
Francis Scott Key's poem just put into words the thoughts of every single Baltimorean that night.
Thanks, Pokey.
Bump to come back tomorrow .....Thanks. :^)
I want purple ink for all American voters. Can you *imagine* the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth the libs would have over that? No more busloads of wandering bands of Democrat voters going from poll to poll. No more dead voters channeling their votes to Democrat election workers. The libs would start yelling about disenfranchisement and racism and thisism and thatism because then they would know the jig was up.
Heck, if disco clubs can stamp your hand, why not polling places?
One of his best.
I love every one of Steyn's editorials, but this is one of the best I've ever read. Brilliant discussion of points and an exquisite conclusion. Bravo!!!!
Think about that. If you're an Iraqi in Syria, you can vote for the political party of your choice. If you're a Syrian in Syria, you have no choice at all. Which of those arrangements is the one with a future?
Bingo! We have a winner.
I'm not the one marching in the streets against Muslim democracy and insisting that Arabs much prefer the "security" of dictatorship.
Maybe we can put to rest the Muslims can't understand democracy line that seems to have been so popular here on certain threads.
This makes me laugh. LOL I do wish to note Aznar, the troops, and the sum that didn't vote with the terrorists still have my respect and sympathy. I can only hope the rest of the electorate can summon half the courage of these iraqi's to correct their course. 1) Iraq's leaders are truly representative of their people. When attending ARAB conferences this is going to rattle many cages.
2) Iraqi's were allowed to vote in oppressive middle eastern countries, like Syria, where their own citizens cannot vote. That's the first break in the wall. For Syria to even allow a free vote, even if it's not their own, is incredible. Many Arabs would have made note of that proud ink stanined finger and longer for their own.
I will have to admit I disagree on our anthem. I love it. :-)
Kind of agree with Steyn on the anthem, but did FSK intend (as Steyn suggests) that it be sung to the tune of To Anacreon in Heaven?
Oer the La-and of the FRE-EEEEEEE!
That's the melisma clogged penultimate (i.e. second to last) line. A melisma is a passage of several notes sung to one syllable of text.
Nice analysis of the song. Mostly people don't even think about the lyrics, they just mouth the syllables.
Is this a scary thought or what???
BINGO MARK!
Godspeed
Denny Crane: "I want two things. First God and then Fox News."
The peerless Steyn nails it again...Thanks Pokey!
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