Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Krauthammer's Take   [NRO Staff]

From last night's "All-Stars."

 

On Obama’s remarks as U.S. troops withdrew from Iraqi cities yesterday:

 

He referred to what we have achieved as a "sovereign, stable, self-reliant" Iraq. He left out one word, and he left it out because it was a George Bush word—democracy. That was a Bush idea—to implant a democracy in Iraq.

 

If we had wanted to have merely a sovereign, stable, self-reliant Iraq, we could have chosen a Saddamist general to succeed Saddam after the war and gotten out.

 

It's true that the democracy established here is a fragile one. It's still struggling, and we will argue for decades over whether it was worth the 4,000 American lives, as we still argue half a century later whether or not it was worth 36,000 lives to salvage a democracy in half of the Korean Peninsula.

 

Nonetheless, it [Iraq] is a democracy, and that's what makes it unique and distinctive, and an amazing achievement in a sea of autocracies and dictatorships—having an effect, by example, on Lebanon, on the Gulf states, and even on Iran, where Iranians look to their west and see a country which is also Shiite, Arab, (which the Persians consider culturally inferior), and yet it has a democracy, it has elections, it has an Ayatollah Sistani who says the clerics ought to stay out of politics, and the Iranians are living under a sixth-century dictatorship run by mullahs.

 

So it's a remarkable achievement, and we ought to emphasize what we have achieved in terms of democracy.

 

And it's a pity that the president ignores that because the democratic nature of Iraq will establish the basis for a strategic alliance between America and Iraq in the future.

 

On Al Franken’s ascension to the Senate:

 

I think it will be refreshing having at least one senator who admits he is a comedian.

 

As for the number 60, you know, the really important number is 50. That's a one-time majority. If you have the vice president, you get control of the Senate and control of the committees.

 

Sixty, as Mort indicated, is a floating number—on different issues, you will have around 60. So it's incrementally a help to Democrats, but it's not in any way a fixed super-majority.

07/01 11:07 AMShare