By Stan Goodenough
Jun 29, 2007
US President George W. Bush believes that, given the chance, democracy can take hold in Iraq, which can become like Israel – not free from violence like “suicide” bombs, but able to continue functioning and flourishing despite it.
According to cynical reports in the overwhelmingly anti-Bush western press, the American leader made his statement in an effort to convey the sense that the US is making progress in Iraq.
It was not the president’s unrealistic hopes that were being scorned, just his claims that the ongoing operations in Iraq were showing signs of success.
Bush is under tremendous pressure from a Democrat-controlled Senate and Congress and an extremely hostile leftist media to admit failure in Iraq and prepare the way for US troops to return home.
Many dismiss as untrue his assertions that the vicious violence taking the lives of tens of people nearly every day is directed by al-Qaeda, and that the Saudi Arabian run terror group likes to use “sensational images …to overwhelm the quiet progress on the ground.”
Bush said that America’s success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy's ability to get a car bombing in the evening news.
“No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street.”
(Just hours after the president made his statement, and as if to prove his point – perhaps even more effectively – London police reported the discovery of a “massive” car bomb that would have brought terror to the heart of the British capital which sappers managed to make safe before it was detonated. Security experts told Sky News early indications were that al-Qaeda might be behind bomb, which could turn out to be similar to the types of bombs being used daily in Iraq.)
Referring to Israel, Bush said “terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it’s not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq.”
What America was aiming for in Iraq, Bush said, was “'the rise of a government that can protect its people, deliver basic services for all its citizens and function as a democracy even amid violence.”
Achieving this, he said, would herald the dawning “of a Middle East where leaders are at peace with their own people, where children enjoy the opportunities their parents only dreamed of, and where America has new allies in the cause of freedom.”
Observers who support Bush keeping troops in Iraq are nonetheless skeptical of his belief in the viability of democracy taking root in a religious Muslim country. Israel, unlike Iraq, is mostly Jewish – a very different belief system when it comes to democracy.