Sunday, January 30, 2005
If they can keep it
Back in November, I wrote about the fall of the Berlin Wall, and how that day felt to people who had grown up in the grip of the Cold War. It was a day when we felt history take a decisive, and welcome, turn toward the good of mankind.
Today is a day like that, as millions of Iraqis go to the polls to vote in their first free elections, the elections we promised them when we toppled Saddam Hussein.
It would be foolish to assume that the elections are going to instantly and permanently erase the problems of terrorism and ethnic and religious tension that exist in Iraq. But the elections are a necessary step on the road. Whether Iraq remains free is up to them. I am not particularly optimistic. But the chance has been given them, as was fitting; to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin's famous remark to Mrs. Powel in 1787, we have given them a republic, if they can keep it.
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Today is a day like that, as millions of Iraqis go to the polls to vote in their first free elections, the elections we promised them when we toppled Saddam Hussein.
It would be foolish to assume that the elections are going to instantly and permanently erase the problems of terrorism and ethnic and religious tension that exist in Iraq. But the elections are a necessary step on the road. Whether Iraq remains free is up to them. I am not particularly optimistic. But the chance has been given them, as was fitting; to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin's famous remark to Mrs. Powel in 1787, we have given them a republic, if they can keep it.
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