Democratizing Iraq

via the Wall Street Journal

Democratizing Iraq is where the hedge has been placed against Islamic extremism's proven compulsion to annihilate civilian populations -- with airliners, humans as bombs and assuredly any WMD they can get -- each weapon as morally repugnant as the next. Yes, Iraqi democratization may not work. But it is a bet worth making. As former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Fred Ikle wrote on this page not long ago, "The paroxysm after 9/11 would be a hiccup compared with the reaction the morning after one or more nuclear bombs caused massive devastation."

Against this, the current opposition spectacle in Washington is not edifying. How did it come to pass that an opposition's measure of a president's foreign policy was all or nothing, success or "failure"? The answer is that the political absolutism now normal in Washington arrived at the moment -- Nov. 7, 2000 -- that our politics subordinated even a war against terror to seizing the office of the presidency.

The winning of the Cold War was bipartisan. The winning of the war on terror is open to question, every hour.