There are a growing number of moments that are etched forever into my consciousness. Some are good. Some are not. They include The resignation of Richard Nixon, the end of the Iranian Hostage Crisis at the start of Ronald Reagan's presidency, The Challenger, the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, Reagan's Berlin Wall speech, the sight of people dancing atop that wall the day the Iron Curtain collopsed, Tienamen Square, 9/11 and the advent of Constitutional Democracy in Iraq.

Of all of these events, the last may be the most astounding. In just over four years since the 9/11 attacks we have brought freedom and representative government to two nations that had known only brutal tyranny.

There is something that bothers me greatly though. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks there were those who said that our response needed to be something other than or a least more than going to the Middle East and killing terrorists. They said we needed to understand and address the root causes of terrorism. (They also seemed to think that we were responsible for those root causes but that's a different issue altogether.) They argued that we needed to do something about poverty and the sense of despair and powerlessness that drove young Arab men to terrorism.

What gets me is, we did that. We did what they said we should do. And they are none too happy about it.

The people of Afghanistan and Iraq are no longer powerless. They have the power to choose their own government. No longer ruled by oppressive authoritarian governments, they now have governments that derive their powers from the consent of the governed.

They have freedom greater than many in that region of the world have ever known. Freedom greater than they can probably yet comprehend. But with that freedom will come prosperity. An honest look at the world will show a pretty clear correlation between freedom and prosperity. Even China which is experiencing a tremendous economic revolution has done so to the extent that they have allowed a degree of freedom.

So we have given the young Arabs so drawn to terrorism the power of their vote. The power of their freedom which if they use it wisely will lead to prosperity. This should put a good dent in their pervasive sense of despair.

All of this and there are people - the same people - who think that we have done a bad thing. Michelle Malkin has a round-up of some of the people who gone in search of the Left's response to the Iraqi vote. Don't bother trying to understand the root causes that drive these people. They are not worth the effort.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 03:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment