Posted on 01/31/2005 4:06:50 PM PST by Pokey78
Driving along and twiddling the radio dial on Sunday night, I caught this tantalising snippet: "In Madrid, demonstrators took to the streets to protest the Iraqi election." I'm fairly blasé about European decadence these days - I barely raised an eyebrow at the news that an unemployed waitress in Berlin faces the loss of her welfare benefits because she's refused to take a job as a prostitute in a legalised brothel - but, even so, it surely couldn't be true that the Spaniards so objected to the Iraqi election that they were protesting about it.
But apparently so. Hard to tell how many there were from the Reuters snap: it was shot fairly close up, the way sympathetic photographers do when they want to make a rally look bigger than it is.
But nevertheless there they were, prosperous, well-dressed Spaniards waving placards showing US missiles and dollar bills going into the ballot box and noisily objecting to the fraud of a so-called election held under American occupation.
Given the fact that the voters of Baghdad and Basra and Kirkuk showed the cojones the Spaniards failed to last March, you'd think those protesters would have been less careless about reminding us that the terrorists got a much better election result out of the Spanish electorate than they did from the Iraqis.
Musically speaking, I'm not really a big fan of Francis Scott Key's Star-Spangled Banner with its awkward prosody and melisma-clogged penultimate line, but the lyric does contain one big idea - that a "land of the free" has to be also, at some level, a "home of the brave".
Unlike Afghanistan, where Pashtuns and Uzbeks and Tajiks and pretty much every other ethnic group helped get rid of the Taliban, in Iraq non-Kurds mostly sat out the liberation of their country, staying in their homes and watching coalition forces ride through town and on to Baghdad. It was not a heroic moment for them.
But Sunday was. Defying the suicide bombers and head-hackers, courageous Iraqis went to the polls in huge numbers. Before the vote, the naysayers told us that the indelible purple dye on each voter's finger would mark them out for punishment by "insurgents". Instead, it became a defiant symbol of the country's freedom.
I liked the picture of some grizzled beaming Arab so proud of his purple finger that he dipped a second one and then raised both to the camera - flipping the V sign, or so I like to think, to the BBC, to Sir Simon Jenkins, to Do-Nothing Doug Hurd, to those Spanish protesters and the rest of the quagmire fetishists. Even the most benign liberator can't "give" liberty to someone: you have to want it, and take it for yourself. This Sunday, Shia and Kurds and even the savvier Sunnis seized it.
Iraq was a home of the brave this weekend and will be a land of the free.
Three years ago, Jonathan Kay of Canada's National Post observed that if Robert Mugabe turned up at an Arab League meeting he'd be the most democratically legitimate leader in the room. That's no longer true. And that's the real significance of what's been happening in Iraq, from the municipal elections last year to this vote to the constitutional assembly.
Like a four-year-old child, the media were so distracted by bright colours and loud noises that they missed the real story. Set fire to a second-hand Nissan and they send a camera crew round to take pretty pictures of the big plume of smoke rising up in the sky.
But the seeds of a democratic culture are harder to spot. The most fascinating detail in the big picture was this: Iraqi expats weren't voting just in Sydney and London and Los Angeles, but also in Syria. Think about that. If you're an Iraqi in Syria, you can vote for the political party of your choice. If you're a Syrian in Syria, you have no choice at all. Which of those arrangements is the one with a future?
"It is just a question of time before we take control of our destiny and for all Syrians to return to Syria to choose a new leadership capable of bringing Syria into the 21st century," says Dr Mohammed al-Ghaida of the Reform Party of Syria. His father heads a tribe in the north of the country, two-thirds of whom are members of the Reform Party. What are the chances of President-for-Life Assad serving out the remainder of his term? The events of this weekend are already rippling on to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and beyond.
In Europe and North America, the western Left have got on the wrong side of this movement. Shame on them - particularly those who've accused me of "Islamophobia" these last three years; I'm not the one marching in the streets against Muslim democracy and insisting that Arabs much prefer the "security" of dictatorship.
In contrast to the inspirational images from Quagmire Central this weekend, in Europe you can find a few Spaniards brave enough to go into the streets and sneer at Iraqi voters and the moronic Bush, but mustering the courage for anything else is harder. On Sunday night the scheduled attraction at the Rotterdam Film Festival was Submission Part One, a short film about a Muslim woman forced into an arranged marriage to be beaten by her husband and raped by her uncle.
The film's director, Theo van Gogh, was subsequently murdered by Islamists, and the screening was supposed to be part of a debate on freedom of expression. Instead, it was cancelled at the last minute for "safety reasons".
If Theo van Gogh hadn't been killed, he'd doubtless already be working on Submission Part Two, a short film set backstage at a European film festival about a Western culture so reflexively craven that nothing can rouse it to defend itself. Submission Part Three will be about the first Muslim woman to have her unemployment benefit cut for refusing a job as dominatrix in a Frankfurt bondage dungeon.
The Western media might want to rethink their basic narrative: the Iraqi people just took a great leap forward. It's Europe that's looking more like an unwinnable quagmire.
How very true
Steyn bump...
It's Europe that's looking more like an unwinnable quagmire.
Amen to that, brother. AAAAAAAAAA-men!
excellent
The Iraqis and Coalition should round up all males w/o a purple finger.
I'm still protesting the last Spanish election.
Classic Steyn!
...the Iraqi people just took a great leap forward. It's Europe that's looking more like an unwinnable quagmire.
So, so true.
And just think, If J-K flip-flop and the other demoncrats had had their way, Saddam would still be in power, torturing, raping and killing ANYONE who dared to speak up in any way, in Iraq, at all.
But to them, Bush is likened to Hitler... Sheesh!
Shame on them - particularly those who've accused me of "Islamophobia" these last three years; I'm not the one marching in the streets against Muslim democracy and insisting that Arabs much prefer the "security" of dictatorship.
Mark is the best
And the irony is completely lost on them, I'm sure.
Great read!
So Van Gogh's movie was cancelled for "security reasons"? Nothing like giving these despicable people a cheap victory. If the Iraqis can risk their lives for freedom and democracy, what happened to Europe?
LOL!
And we've got a big fat military presence right there in the middle of all of it.
Steyn isn't pulling any punches here -- good for him.
Steyn saved the best for last!
It was a sham. Typical European cowardice. And what did the Spaniards get? A pussified socialist PM.
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