When the Soviet Union fell, after a decade of determined effort, the Democrats went out of their way to avoid giving any credit to that idiot Reagan and his ilk. Even today you will find people who claim that it wasn't Reagan's doing at all -- it was an inevitible failure. The Revolution was betrayed. Never mind that these are all people who bitterly opposed Reagan's resumption of the Cold War and had nothing good to say about the prospects of winning. Not one of them said "The Soviets are bound to fail anyway." Instead they called for subsidies.
Now we are in the middle of a similar grand effort, again by a Republican president, to overturn centuries of horrid governance in the Middle East. At each and every point, the Left has opposed Bush. If he was for sanctions, they were against them and suggested force. If he used force, they recalled sanctions. If he committed to the one problem, they pointed somewhere else with pressing urgency. And throughout it all they asserted that the effort was doomed. Democracy could never flourish in the Middle East. Arabs didn't want it.
Amazingly, however, Bush's policies seem to be working, from Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq to Lebanon and Ukraine and beyond. One can almost hear the mullacracy in Iran crumble. Most Muslims, like people everywhere, seem to want freedom and self-rule. And the ripples grow.
And what does the Left say? They're trotting out the "just happened" theory once again:
I think the way to look at it is, they can't credit for every good thing that happens, but they need to be able to manage it. I think what's happening in Lebanon is great, but it's not necessarily directly related to the fact that we went into Iraq militarily.Or worse:
Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's hope for the rest of us...There's always hope that this might not work.Posted by Kevin Murphy at March 2, 2005 01:39 PM | TrackBack