Newsweek Declares Victory in Iraq

… and in other news, pigs flew.  From this week’s Newsweek cover story, “Victory at Last“:

“Iraqi democracy will succeed,” President George W. Bush declared in November 2003, “and that success will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation.” The audience at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington answered with hearty applause. Bush went on: “The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.”

Bush’s rhetoric about democracy came to sound as bitterly ironic as his pumped-up appearance on an aircraft carrier a few months earlier, in front of an enormous banner that declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. And yet it has to be said and it should be understood—now, almost seven hellish years later—that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.

Any recipe for defeating Islamic fascism has to include Islamic democracy as an ingredient.  Iraq could be not just Obama’s greatest accomplishment, but Bush’s as well.

3 thoughts on “Newsweek Declares Victory in Iraq

  1. "while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region……" have they neglected to see whats happening in Iran right next door? Democracy is spreading though it may not be established the ideology of democracy is contagious. Many in Afghanistan want it they are just clueless as to how to get it, and corruption runs wild there.

    I haven't read NewsWeek's entire article yet. I don't suppose there is an apology buried in there some where is there?

  2. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember Bush declaring victory quite soon after the onset of this war. I can't keep up with all the declarations!

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