From the WSJ Opinion Archives
WONDER LAND
Iraq's Fourth of July
Democracy won't come easy--but then, it never has anywhere else.
It is Fourth of July weekend, American democracy's big day. As every schoolchild in America once knew, this is the date on which a group of patriots signed Thomas Jefferson's famous declaration of freedom from England. The year was 1776, more than a year after the colonists had taken 49 casualties at the battles of Lexington and Concord. By the war's end, six years later, some 4,400 would die on the American side. Today it is Iraq's chance to take a shot at democracy. Can they do it?
I did not know George Washington, but Iyad Allawi, Iraq's new prime minister, is no George Washington. But neither was Boris Yeltsin, the father of whatever sort of country post-Soviet Russia has become. Looking further back over democracy's progress, we find the leaders of the French Revolution instituting something called the Cult of Reason amid rivers of blood that flowed two more years up to the Constitution of 1795--followed by that famous democrat, Napoleon Bonaparte. Still, and not unreasonably, France claims to be part of the glorious heritage of democracy.
The last time Iraqis nationwide went to the polls, 11 million people were said to have voted, and 100% voted for Saddam Hussein. In April 2003, the United States, Britain and their allies liberated Iraq from its fake president and the Baath Party. This week the U.S. restored sovereign control of the nation to the Iraqi people. So the process of democratization has begun, under U.S. protection, and voters here must decide where they stand.
In this week's New York Times/CBS poll--the one with all the gloom and doom about President Bush's conduct of the Iraq war--one finds this, the 67th question, put to what must be very patient respondents: "Should the U.S. troops stay in Iraq as long as it takes to make sure Iraq is a stable democracy, even if that takes a long time . . .?" Some 54% said stay the course; 40% wanted out now.
Most of those stating their doubts in public about democracy in Mesopotamia are conservatives who supported the war itself but have come to believe that Middle Eastern history, culture, religion and an unseemly fascination with explosives and blood feuds makes self-government unlikely. Most liberals, meanwhile, concluded before the war that Iraqi democracy was a neoconservative plot and so are pretty much sitting out this turn in history. In his realpolitik phase a while back, John Kerry announced that notions like democracy and even human rights (a crown jewel of the modern Democratic Party) should be back-burnered.
George W. Bush is our No. 1 advocate of Iraqi democracy, though he sometimes makes it sound like Iraq is on the moon. I wish that in his frequent statements on restoring Iraqi freedom, President Bush would describe what that will do not just for them, but for us.
The Middle East and North Africa, with 326 million people, is projected to grow to 649 million by 2050. It would be good for our national security if one large nation in that region became a normal place. We should be selfish in promoting normalcy for Iraq and the Middle East. At its most basic, a normal political country has at least two competitive political parties and holds periodic elections. Why? So that its citizens will spend their political energies arguing with each other, rather than sitting in local cafes trying to figure out who to blame for their lot and who to kill.
Politics alone isn't normal life. We need to give self-governing Iraqis (and Afghans, also planning elections) full entree to the global trading system so that their young men can do what normal 20-year-olds have always done: Get out of bed in the morning, spend eight hours working at a real job and go home to a family, TV and soccer with their children. He still might think Allah is the best and the world full of infidels; but it's just a thought, not a jihad. Life goes on.
Consider the political passage of Russia. Compared to Russia's road to democracy, Iraq's politics now almost looks like ancient Athens. Gorbachev began perestroika in 1985. Multicandidate elections weren't held until 1989. Yeltsin was elected president in July 1991. A month later the Communists staged a coup.
Have doubts about Messrs. Allawi, Chalabi, or Sistani? Recall the names of the ambitious politicos who rolled in and out of Russia's infant politics--Gaidar, Chernomyrdin, Lebed, Rutskoi, Kozyrev, Zhirinovsky, Primakov, Yavlinsky, Zyuganov, Nemtsov, Chubais, Stepashin. In August 1999 Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin prime minister. Mr. Yeltsin, a Russian patriot, would routinely vanish for vodka detox. Russia's struggling, suppressed democracy is now a problem the world manages, rather than fears.
Press coverage of Iraq, emphasizing every roadside bomb and clerical burp, will make Iraq's prospects seem hopeless. But Iraq's chances of achieving democracy are as good as Russia's and maybe better. Yesterday the Iraqis arraigned Saddam and will hold a long, public trial. The Romanians gave the Ceausescus a short trial in a barn, then took them out back and shot them. In March democratic Romania joined NATO. India is an established democracy, where elections often feature murderous mobs.
We need to cut Iraq some slack and encourage its people's best instincts. In the past year, beset by Islamic maniacs, they've elected municipal councils in many small towns. In March, they completed an interim constitution worthy of respect. A free press is flourishing. Despite assassinations, its leaders didn't cut and run.
Certainly many risks lurk. Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia have every interest in blowing up Iraqi democracy before it spreads to their autocracies. The U.N.'s insistence on proportional elections could prevent serious people from governing. The world media will drape the whole process in endless pessimism.
As the ink dried on the U.S. Constitution in 1787, Benjamin Franklin famously described the aborning American nation: "a republic, if you can keep it." This weekend the United States celebrates its 228th Fourth of July. My guess is that despite the last hard year, despite the bitterness and blood feuds about to consume the U.S. democratic process, most Americans still hope that the Iraqi people will find a way to build a republic worth keeping.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
