by alan Caruba
February 1, 2005
It is unfortunate that so many of the Fourth Estate (journalists) are also a Fifth Column, a force inside our nation seeking to distort and destroy its achievements. Nowhere was this more obvious than the mainstream news coverage of the first free elections in Iraq, as the first step toward a constitution and a government that is not composed of psychopaths and thugs.
In the face of a voter turnout that was heroic many in the mainstream press did their best to emphasize the numbers of those killed by the declared enemies of democracy. We lose that many people in highway accidents on any day of the year.
Thanks to the way U.S. history is taught these days, too many americans think of it as something fashioned by slave-owning hypocrites while ignoring the price most paid for pledging their lives and their sacred honor to free the colonies from the greatest military power in their world. Too often, modern americans fail to grasp the difficulties faced and the sacrifices made for an idea called freedom.
We know the names of the Founding Fathers, but we mostly do not know the names of those who fought for that idea. They did so not for fame, nor fortune, but for a nation in which people could live safe and secure, governed by laws made, not by a king or emperor, but by their chosen representatives.
It is unfortunate, too, that some americans think that democracy has been declared in Iraq and our troops can and should come home. It took seven years to drive the British out of the Colonies, another couple of years with a defective articles of Confederation, and a top-secret, behind-closed-doors session in Philadelphia to produce the U.S. Constitution. The Iraqis have until august to produce a constitution of their own and, in October, the nation will vote to accept or reject it. Iraq is a very different place than the america of the 1700s, but they can do this just as we once did.
Even with our new Constitution, it took more years for the system we call democracy to evolve into political parties. Then, "four score and seven years" later, it had to be protected with a Civil War that killed more men in a single battle than the combined first and second invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and that includes casualties on both sides. after that, in just the last century, america had to participate in two world wars to defeat the enemies of freedom. Then, with exquisite patience and endurance, we spent fifty years in a Cold War to defeat the totalitarian expansion of Soviet Communism.
If you listen to or read the instant analysis of the mainstream press, however, you would think that democracy (1) was a crazed, stupid idea that could never succeed in the Middle East or anywhere else, (2) that we are only in Iraq because the Bush administration "lied" us into the conflict, and (3) we should quit the region as swiftly as possible. These are the notions of small children who prefer cartoons to real life.
Democracy has begun in Iraq and it will take a decade or so to fight off its immediate enemies. For that Iraq will require our support. after that, it will take a generation or two to flourish. Ultimately the freedom Iraqis put into daily practice will undermine all the monarchies and despotisms that mark that region of the world. and that is why streets in Baghdad will someday be named after Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell.
History unfolds on a day-to-day basis. We need both the patience and the will to win this new war against the enemies of freedom. We need to filter out the childish nattering of the mainstream press and simply believe what our eyes and our hearts tell us is true.