Democracy

I meant to link to this video at Michael Yon's website the other day, so here's a better-late-than-never post.

I'm anxiously awaiting his impending dispatch on the Iraqi elections from December 15. In the meantime, check out this great piece today by Alan Dowd in The American Enterprise Online.

Iraq continues its relentless, rapid, and remarkable march from repression to representative democracy not because of vote-counting bureaucrats, but because the Iraqi people are courageous. They have defied mass murder and mayhem, terror and torture, to vote. They had to walk to the polls because of a nation-wide Election Day ban on automobiles (aimed at preventing car bombs). In fact, even though car bombs killed policemen and mortars rained down on schoolhouses in the days preceding the election, three out of four Iraqis stood exposed to the terror—and faced it down yet again.

If, as one Iraqi voter told the New York Times, “Iraqis aren’t used to democracy, we have to learn it,” then they are quick learners. In fact, we could learn something from them. Few Americans would walk to their polling places; fewer still would risk their lives to vote. After all, lines and rain are enough to keep millions of us away from the ballot box.

How true.