11 Million Iraqis Vote to the Sneer of a Clintonite and the Sour Grapes of "Experts"

Robert Kagan and William Kristol explain here.

THE PURPLE INK on 11 million Iraqi fingers had not yet dried after an unprecedented, almost miraculous exercise in democratic freedom--and already there were querulous American critics working hard to make light of the whole thing. "Experts Cautious in Assessing Iraqi Election," ran the headline on a Friday Washington Post story by Robin Wright; "High Turnout, Low Violence a Positive Step, but Not a Turning Point, Analysts Say." And indeed, the indefatigable Ms. Wright had telephoned her usual cast of sour experts, each of whom was eager to help explain why, whatever else it might be, the peaceful election of a national assembly for a fully self-governing Arab democracy was Not a Turning Point. Elsewhere in the Post, former Clinton assistant secretary of state Susan Rice took the occasion of Iraq's elections to reject, with a bit of a sneer, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's assertion that democracy in Iraq serves American security interests. Funny, isn't it? We seem to remember that the Clinton administration's declared foreign policy doctrine was something called "democratic enlargement." No longer operative, it seems.