But They Had an Election!

Pat Buchanan puts last week's Iraq election in context:

When kings, autocrats or despots are deposed and the people rejoice, it has not always meant democracy is assured. In modern history, people's revolutions have produced tyrannies far more monstrous than the ones they have pulled down.

But they had an election!

In 1917, progressives hailed the revolution in Russia that deposed the czar, for it cleansed the Allied cause of the taint of despotism. But that November, Bolsheviks swept Kerensky aside, seized power and began a 70-year reign of terror. In 1918, the detested Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated. The civilized world rejoiced. Fifteen years later, Hitler took power.

But they had an election!

The Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe were all imposed from above on Christian peoples who belonged to the West and had been moving toward democracy. The communist nations of Europe were kidnapped children who never forgot who they were or where they came from.

But they had an election!

In the Arab Middle East, there is no memory of democracy. There is an unbroken history of despotism and domination – by Ottoman Turks, then by Western imperial powers. To understand what kind of nations liberated Middle East peoples will construct, consider the most powerful currents running in the region.

But they had an election!