EMERGING IRAQ – AT 8:49 A.M. ET:  Look, it's not going to be perfect, but, as the great Fouad Ajami writes, Iraq is emerging as a young democracy, and we can thank George W. Bush:

Forgive Vice President Joe Biden the audacity of claiming last month on CNN's "Larry King Live" that Iraq is destined to be "one of the great achievements of this administration." The larger point he made—that a representative government is taking hold in Baghdad—is on the mark.

As Iraq approaches its general elections on March 7, we should take yes for an answer. The American project in Iraq has midwifed that rarest of creatures in the Greater Middle East: a government that emerges out of the consent of the governed. We should trust the Iraqis with their own history. That means letting their electoral process play out against the background of the Arab dynasties and autocracies, and of the Iranian theocracy next door that made a mockery out of its own national elections.

Wonderfully stated.

Nor is it true that a sister republic of the Iranian theocracy is emerging in Baghdad, as some American officials have suggested. This is a slur on Iraq and Iraqis, and on the vast Shiite majority to be exact.

So Iran has designs on Iraq. Well what of it? A long border, the traffic of centuries in faith and commerce, runs between the two countries. But no Iraqi project in the offing contemplates making Iraq a satrap of the Persian state. The Iraqis are neither Lebanese seeking outside patronage, nor Palestinians in need of money and guns from foreign donors. They are a tough breed, they have their own material means, oil aplenty, and a determination to keep their country whole and theirs.

And...

Iraqis of all stripes are wary of Iran. In the provincial elections of 2009, pro-Iranian candidates were trounced and Iraqi nationalists carried the day.

There plays upon Iraqis the hope that their country can make its own way, defying the obituaries of doom written for their new order in neighboring lands and beyond. There is a transparent parliamentary culture in Iraq, and we for our part ought to be proud of what we have given birth to.

And let us not forget, as they take credit for all the good that's emerging, that the Obamans were dead set against our operations in Iraq.  Don't let them forget it, and don't let the American voter forget it.

Leave it to the Egyptians and the Arabs of the Peninsula and the Persian Gulf to belittle the new order in Iraq. They threw everything at it but it managed to survive. Peace has not settled upon Baghdad, but this Iraq, even in its current condition, is a rebuke to the dynasties and the dictatorships of the Arab world.

It is also a rebuke to the leftist intellectuals of America and Europe, including a number in the media and the academy.

Some miss the days when, they say, Saddam Hussein acted as a buffer to Iran:

There is a better way of "balancing" Iran: a regime in Baghdad endowed with the legitimacy of democratic norms. Of all that has been said about Iraq since the time that country became an American burden, nothing equals the stark formulation once offered by a diplomat not given to grandstanding and rhetorical flourishes. Said former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker: "In the end, what we leave behind and how we leave will be more important than how we came."

We can already see the outline of what our labor has created: a representative government, a binational state of Arabs and Kurds, and a country that does not bend to the will of one man or one ruling clan.

COMMENT:  Don't expect Fouad Ajami's optimism to be taught to our college students, any more than our college students are taught what happened to South Vietnam after it was "liberated" by the North.  But the truth has a way of getting out.

March 3, 2010