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December 19, 2005
Freedom Advances
The Defeatocrats keep complaining...
...but freedom advances across the Middle East.
From a press release issued today by Freedom House:
The people of the Arab Middle East experienced a modest but potentially significant increase in political rights and civil liberties in 2005, Freedom House announced in a major survey of global freedom released today.The global survey, "Freedom in the World," shows that although the Middle East continues to lag behind other regions, a measurable improvement can be seen in freedom in several key Arab countries, as well as the Palestinian Authority. In another key finding, the number of countries rated by Freedom House as Not Free declined from 49 in 2004 to 45 for the year 2005, the lowest number of Not Free societies identified by the survey in over a decade. In noteworthy country developments, Ukraine and Indonesia saw their status improve from Partly Free to Free; Afghanistan moved from Not Free to Partly Free; and the Philippines saw its status decline from Free to Partly Free.
According to Thomas O. Melia, acting executive director of Freedom House, "The modest but heartening advances in the Arab Middle East result from activism by citizen groups and reforms by governments in about equal measures. This emerging trend reminds us that men and women in this region share the universal desire to live in free societies."
...The global picture thus suggests that the past year was one of the most successful for freedom since Freedom House began measuring world freedom in 1972.
(Hat tip NRO)
Yes the advance of democracy is slow.
Yes Iraq is still rated "not free" by Freedom House.
Yes there will be setbacks in the future.
But when has it not been this way?
As I recall, the American South was not totally free in 1867, and that's putting it mildly. Rarely does a country go from complete tyranny to complete freedom overnight. In this regard Japan and Germany were the exceptions.
So it will take time to get Iraq right. But time is now on our side, as the terrorists are slowly but surely being defeated. Their strategy of attacking Iraqi civilians has backfired, and we see the results in the elections of a few days ago where the Sunni's participated in great numbers.
All we have to do is to stay firm. At the beginning of the War on Terror I said that it was really about willpower, and current events are proving this out. And yes, Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror, and no it doesn't matter that Saddam didn't plan or know about 9/11. We can't stick our head in the sand, our offensive strategy of engaging the enemy on his turf is working despite greater than anticipated difficulties (Clausewitz smiles knowlingly; google for "friction of war").
As Freedom House notes, freedom is advancing steadily if slowly. And as Margaret Thatcher once said, "This is no time to go wobbly"
Posted by Tom at December 19, 2005 10:24 PM
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