Victor Davis Hanson: Staying Power

The New Republic ^ | February 14, 2005 | Victor Davis Hanson

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With the increasing violence leading up to this week's Iraqi elections for 275 seats in a new national assembly, a despair emerged in some U.S. circles that 150,000 American troops and their coalition allies could never really maintain security. If one could not always get to and from the Baghdad airport without being fired upon, how could Iraqis adjudicate a nationwide election? If the old conventional wisdom held that long-awaited Iraqi autonomy would undermine support for the terrorists, the new gloomy prognosis was that endemic violence and Sunni boycotts would nullify the significance of the elections or perhaps that a Shia-dominated, wild-card national assembly would circumscribe U.S. military options and play into the hands of Iran. "No matter how the voting turns out," Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria recently wrote, "the prospects for genuine democracy in Iraq are increasingly grim." 

Now, even though the elections on January 30 proved to be mostly free of violence and saw good turnouts, the old pessimism remains. John Kerry warned Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," "[N]o one in the United States should try to over-hype this election." New York Times columnist Bob Herbert admonished us the day after the vote that nothing was really changed. Consequently, we are still pondering calls either to leave Iraq — confessing defeat or claiming that we have already won by removing Saddam Hussein — or de facto to trisect the country. 

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FYI

[RushCrush]

[Tolik]

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[Valin]

John Kerry warned Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," "[N]o one in the United States should try to over-hype this election."

I agree. How do you over-hype the first free and open election in the Arab world?


Even John Kerry get's it.
/sarcasm

[Tolik]

Added to the VDH ping list.

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