In West Africa, Nigeria's failures in democracy are noted as a failed beacon:
Ruling party candidate Umaru Yar'Adua looked set to win Nigeria's presidential poll on Monday, early results showed, but monitors condemned the vote as a blow to the country becoming a beacon of democracy for Africa.
In Iraq, democracy is advancing despite car bombs:
A Shiite-led Iraqi democracy is taking root--an astonishing achievement given the concerted efforts of the Iraqi Sunnis, and the surrounding Sunni Arab states, to attack and delegitimize the new Iraq. The country's obstreperous, stubborn, highly nationalist, Shiite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, appears increasingly to be a man of mettle and courage. Slowly but surely, he is distancing himself from the clerical scion, Moktada al-Sadr, the overlord of the Sunni-shooting Mahdi Army. Maliki is so far holding his ground after the resignation of Sadr's men in his government.
And if democracy is unimportant to the Moslem world, why does Syria bother with sham elections?
Syrians began voting for a new parliament Sunday in an election the government hopes will help soften the country's image and ease its international isolation. But the opposition called the vote a farce and urged a boycott.
And Syria is far from the only Islamic autocracy that goes through the motions of democracy. If democracy is not important, I have to ask why these regimes bother having elections? Clearly, they think the image of democracy is important.
If Nigeria could be a beacon in West Africa, I don't know why Iraq won't be a beacon in the Middle East.
And that's what unites Sunni Arab regimes and Shia Persians in Iran in fearing the results of our Iraq endeavor--fear of the impact of a democratic Iraq on their autocracies when their people see that there is an alternative to the deadening misrule that has dragged down an entire region and religion as the world has progressed.
Our victory in Iraq will change the rules in a region still frozen in the Cold War era standards of strongmen who rule without regard to their people or their well being. When the history of the Middle East in this era is written, President Bush may well be known as George the Liberator.
