As our returning troops readjust to a mostly gentle February climate here in South Dakota, it is worth taking a moment to consider what they have helped to achieve. Consider this from the Washington Post on the outcome of the Iraqi elections.
THE 8.5 MILLION Iraqis who turned out to vote two weeks ago have elected a national assembly more suited for the task of nation-building than many would have expected. An alliance backed by the Shiite clergy won a plurality of the vote, and it may command a bare majority in the 275-seat body. But fears that Iraq's new government will be monopolized by pro-Iranian factions bent on religious rule seem unfounded. The Shiite block will be balanced by an almost equal number of secular legislators, and its leaders acknowledge the need to compromise with Kurds, Sunnis and other groups. It is likely that the new prime minister will be secular and Western-educated, and his cabinet may contain some of the same politicians handpicked by the United States for Iraq's first postwar government. [My emphasis].
Or consider this, from the London Times:
Some despotic Arab regimes, already shaking with fear that democracy in Iraq may spread to their neck of the wood, have lost no time in saying this. Al-Ahram, the daily newspaper of the Egyptian Government, greeted the election results as the signal for civil war, claiming that holding elections is the principal cause of the current violence in Iraq. The Saudi media has brought back the Shia bogeyman as an argument against the holding of genuine elections in the region.
The overwhelming majority of Iraqis, however, see the Khomeinist regime in Tehran not as a model but as a warning. The Iraqi electorate has rejected not only Khomeinism but all other brands of extremism: the combined share of the votes for the most radical groups was puny. The party of Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand anti-American Shia cleric who was supposed to represent the angry Arab street, won just two seats. One thing is sure: Iraq has been set on the road to democracy.
For all the daunting obstacles that yet lay in the path between this newly elected government and a republic, this is the most hopeful situation the Arab world has ever seen. Whatever you think about the American invasion of 2003, our troops deserve to know that they may have changed the course of history in a very favorable way.
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