For the moment, they are routed. The grudging tones and surly looks of the anti-war camp, as they are obliged to comment through gritted teeth on the undiluted joy of the immensely brave and determined Iraqi people who have never in living memory been able to choose how they are governed, provides a shocking reminder of the moral sickness of the west. The anti-war camp is having to watch the awesome spectatcle of the assertion of the deepest human instinct for freedom -- an instinct they have done everything in their power to frustrate. At every stage of the Iraq war, they have talked down the enterprise, predicted dire outcomes, dwelt disprortionately on every setback and never reported the advances being made -- in short, mounted a propaganda assault based on lies in the service of defeatism and appeasement. In the process, they have given succour to the forces of darkness who have been stacking up the bodies of the murdered higher and higher against the incoming tide of freedom. But it didn't work. The Iraqis have pulled off their election against unprecedented odds and in the face of murderous violence. Their leaders have behaved throughout not just with astonishing bravery but with shrewdness, maturity and self-restraint.

The Telegraph speaks for decency in its leader today:

'No democratic election is flawless. It is human nature that the loser in any system should blame the system rather than himself: think, for example, about our own squabbles over postal voting, the West Lothian Question, or the wording of referendums. But, yesterday, Iraq became the most democratic country in the Arab world. What a pity that so many writers who, in other circumstances, are optimists about human progress, should shut their eyes to what is happening. In their determination to say "I told you so", they are coming perilously close to siding with jihadi murderers. Shame on them'.

Of course, this is only one step on the road to peace and prosperity in Iraq. Of course, the whole thing can still go badly wrong. And there may well be continuing violence as Zarqawi's jihadis try to prevent the institutions of a free society from taking root. But he has lost a crucial battle in his own war. He tried desperately to prevent this election from taking place because he knew how high the stakes were. As he said, once democracy was established in Iraq he would no longer be fighting the American 'oppressor' but other Muslim Arabs. The jihad would no longer have much logic to it. Will it now run out of steam?

All we can do now is hold our breath, and hope. But we can be sure that the anti-war camp will be praying for the violence to intensify, praying for Iraq's fragile democracy to implode, praying for any setback to enable them to crow that Bush and Blair have failed. In the New York Times, Michael Ignatieff -- with whose analysis I do not entirely agree -- expresses proper disgust at such treachery:

'All this makes you wonder when the left forgot the proper name for people who bomb polling stations, kill election workers and assassinate candidates. The right name for such people is fascists'.

Yes-- although it's not just the left. Large swathes of the neanderthal, isolationist right also wish democratic Iraq ill. All these people have viewed every single development of the Iraq drama through the prism of their opposition to the war and their profound desire retrospectively to prove that they were right. That is why we in the west have been living in a looking-glass world. The Iraqis do not have that decadent luxury. Yesterday, they put us to shame indeed.

Posted by melanie at January 31, 2005