Iran, 2004


Remembered

Michael Kelly: "True to His Words" * The Atlantic Monthly editors * Andrew Sullivan (fourth item)

Bob Zangas: Instapundit * Eric Johnson * Bettnet

Fern Holland: Power Line * Joseph Duggan

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Nina Shea, director of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, on the new Iraqi constitution: Its mere existence challenges the region, particularly the people of Iran who long for such a constitution.

The Australian, in an editorial: THERE is no such thing as a good war. Every death is a wicked waste, every ruined home a mark of misery. But there are just wars democracies must fight, and last year's campaign to disarm Saddam Hussein was one such struggle. A year on, we must consider it a success in the continuing campaign against global terror. The dictator's disgusting regime is gone forever. The prospect of a democratic Iraq serves as a potential model to replace the motley collection of dictatorships that pass for governments throughout the Middle East…

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[T]his war is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan. The primary focus of U.S. forces in Iraq today is erecting a decent, legitimate, tolerant, pluralistic representative government from the ground up. I don't know if we can pull this off. We got off to an unnecessarily bad start. But it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad and it is a moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot. Thomas L Friedman, NYT, 11.30.03

"I think [Iraq is] going well. It breaks my heart whenever anybody dies, but we liberated 25 million people who were living under a dictator. It puts us on the side of democracy in the Arab world. Twenty years from now, we'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who says it wasn't worth the effort. This is not just another democracy. This is a democracy in an Arab world ..." Former Sen. Bob Kerrey, NY Sun, 12.29.03