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The Road Map for A Sovereign Iraq

Jun- 9-2004 » Filed Under: Iraq News

The following is a column written by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. If you're like me and wonder, "what happens after June 30th?", this article is a good starting point. The article also provides some good statistics regarding the reconstruction effort.

[Link to Full Article]
BY PAUL WOLFOWITZ

After a suicide car bombing killed Iraqi Interim Governing Council President Izzedine Salim and eight others on May 17, one Iraqi put that act of terror into a larger perspective for those who wonder if democracy can work in Iraq. His name is Omar, one of the new Iraqi "bloggers," and he wrote on his Web log: "We cannot . . . protect every single person, including our leaders and the higher officials who make favorite targets for the terrorists--but we can make their attempts go in vain by making our leadership 'replaceable.' "

Exercising his newfound freedom of speech via the Internet, Omar addressed what he sees as the terrorists' fundamental misunderstanding about where Iraq is going. Terrorists--whether Saddamists or foreigners--"think in the same way their dictator-masters do," failing to grasp that the idea of leadership by an indispensable strongman applies to totalitarian regimes--not democracies.

That understanding of the stability of representative government was confirmed when council member Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawar assumed the Governing Council presidency. This orderly transfer of leadership showed that the rudiments of a democratic process are already at work in Iraq. The hope for a new Iraq, in which freedom is protected by democracy and the rule of law, rests in such processes.

There's much more.

(via RCP)


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