The Shame Of The Left Of The West

In her WaPo essay of today, The Promise of Democratic Peace, Condoleezza Rice details and defends democratization as the key victory strategy for the Global War on Terror.

If you are one of those who think the world hasn't changed, or if you're more fixed on oil profits than world peace, her points will be garbage to you, but if you do happen to live in the real world, it is clear the Bush/Rice strategy is the only strategy that works. That's because the old dynamics of war between states, particularly the world power states, is becoming unthinkable, as it must for global survival.

The threat today is, in Condi's words, from "the dynamics within weak and failing states [more] than by the borders between strong and aggressive ones." She then defines the diplomatic solution to this situation:

Our experience of this new world leads us to conclude that the fundamental character of regimes matters more today than the international distribution of power. Insisting otherwise is imprudent and impractical. The goal of our statecraft is to help create a world of democratic, well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. Attempting to draw neat, clean lines between our security interests and our democratic ideals does not reflect the reality of today's world. Supporting the growth of democratic institutions in all nations is not some moralistic flight of fancy; it is the only realistic response to our present challenges.

It continues to amaze me that the faction that argues against freedom, the end of repression, the right to demonstrate and the death of regimes based on fear and torture is the Left of the West.

This will be the era of their greatest shame. They will forever live with the fact that as freedom blossomed, they jeered, and as change for the better gained momentum, they stood on the tracks trying to stop it.

The Left of the West has had nothing positive to contribute to the Secretary of State's list of change that's occured in just the last year:

A Lebanon that is free of foreign occupation and advancing democratic reform. A Palestinian Authority run by an elected leader who openly calls for peace with Israel. An Egypt that has amended its constitution to hold multiparty elections. A Kuwait where women are now full citizens. And, of course, an Iraq that in the face of a horrific insurgency has held historic elections, drafted and ratified a new national charter, and will go to the polls again in coming days to elect a new constitutional government.

Yay for us, shame on them.