If out of democratic Iraq emerges a sharia state allied with Iran, Mr. Rafsanjani would be right. Which would make President Bush wrong -- not about the need to fight in Iraq, but about the transformative powers of the democratic process (emphasis on process). In other words, what we see in Iraq and in the rest of the Muslim world is that the political freedom to vote doesn't guarantee election results that we in the West would in any way equate with political freedom. Amid claims of Shi'ite election fraud, one liberal party candidate, Mithal al-Alusi, told The New York Sun: "We may have just traded the Ba'athist fascists for the religious fascists."
This isn't to say scrap the war, or give credence to hate-Bush Democratic carping. But there is a deepening disconnect between Western democracy theories and Muslim democracy realities that urgently needs to be confronted and assessed.
And not just in Iraq. A similar story unfolded in Egypt where, contrary to Washington's wishes and projections, November elections also yielded results that were more democratic, but not more liberal. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Most liberal, secular reformers lost their seats, while a banned Islamist party" -- the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) -- "became the most important opposition bloc in parliament. The MB platform?
"Islam is the solution." As political analyst Hala Mustafa told the Chronicle, "It was a complete defeat for the liberal political tendencies."
Then there's the Palestinian Authority. Election Day lies ahead (January 25), but primary victories for Hamas already underscore the inability of foreign-made democratic machinery to produce anything akin to homegrown democratic candidates. Instead, we get People's Choice terrorists -- convicted killer Marwan Barghouti, "mother of martyrs" Miriam Farhat, and "Hitler" (aka Jamal Abu Al-Rub), a real crowd-pleaser known for public execution-style slayings of suspected Israeli "collaborators."
And these are People's Choice terrorists with attitude: When the European Union, rather surprisingly, discussed ending aid to the PA if Hamas won parliamentary seats next month, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal responded with Sons-of-Liberty-style rhetoric about the dangers of "playing with the values of democracy and freedom."
All of which is why I beg to differ when the president says, "the terrorists know that democracy is their enemy." From the PA, where sharia-supporting terrorists are winning primaries, to Egypt, where sharia-supporting terror-ideologues are being elected, to Iraq, where sharia-supporting terror-state-allies are being elected, democracy is not their enemy. It is vox populi. And just because the people have spoken doesn't mean we should applaud what they say.