This week I am attending the Young America’s Foundation Student Conference in Washington, D.C. It will be taking place starting Monday at George Washington University and through the week I will be listening to some true GOP greats - Newt Gingrich, Michael Reagan, George Allen, among many others. I will even be going to a White House briefing on Wednesday and having dinner banquets every night of the week. I don’t know if I’ll be able to blog about the conference during the week due to the fact I don’t know if I’ll have readily available internet access. The agenda is awesome - discussions will range from the War on Terror, the Constitution and natural law, to college activism, and even profiles on subjects like feminism. It’s going to be an exciting week…I’m stoked. More to come later.
William Kristol has a great article on the troop surge and its potential political impact over at The Weekly Standard. I agree with everything he says in the article, including the last paragraph:
Over the last few months, the United States (finally) surged in Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq has now surged against the surge. Iran is surging against the surge. We’re pushing them back. Now the Democrats in Congress, the mainstream media, and the foreign policy establishment have mounted their own surges against the surge. So far, Bush is beating them back. If Bush can hang tough, and General Petraeus can keep on surging, the Defeatists will fail. And the United States will have a good chance to succeed in Iraq.
If everything continues to go well with the surge and benchmarks continue to be met, the United States could see a great situation in Iraq leading to an eventual pullout of U.S. troops. However, I don’t think many people are thinking about what happens after the surge. Will we surge in Iraq again to protect the results of the former surge? Will there need to be another troop surge if violence that once was suppressed, re-emerges after U.S. troops leave? These are interesting thoughts that need to be discussed, but not in this post. What I’m concerned about is something that not many people are talking about - the need for stable democratic institutions.
I’m constantly online reading what other conservatives think about this war and most all agree that the United States can pull off a victory in Iraq with enough steadfast determination to succeed. But many aren’t talking about why political reconciliation is so hard for the Iraqi government. Ethnic tensions and the dynamics of tribal factions are now just being understood, but I think that people have lost focus of one of the most important ingredients of any representative, democratically elected government - the need for institutions and traditions supporting democratic governance.
There is a legitimate need for proper and stable democratic and executive institutions that will help to bring stability to a new government derived of the people. It’s easy to talk about representative goverment in countries with rich traditions of local control and self rule like the United States and most western European countries (even stemming back to colonial legislatures). But when you inject representative government into a society with little to no history of long term self-rule, conditioning and development of democratic institutions takes much more time, especially when pressured to influence societial governance as quickly as Iraq is being pressured right now.
In my opinion, the focus on development of democratic institutions is missing in the surge mindset of the president and many U.S. commanders in the region. This must be corrected if we are to be successful in helping Iraq develop a strong federal government that is truly capable of autonomous self rule.
Today is July 4th, a day many people remember as a day to watch fireworks, grill some steaks, and maybe even get drunk. But today is not just a day to party, but a day that must be remembered as the day Americans stood up to a tyrannous regime and broke away in liberty. Today, let us remember the spirit of those early Americans who stood in union against the abuses of power. Let us remember those who put the political theories of liberty and freedom into action, and let us remember our great American experiment:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…