Is democracy racist?

I have to wonder, given objections I keep hearing to our efforts to bring democracy to Iraq.

What I keep hearing is that we don't need to be there, that we need a timetable for withdrawal, that it has turned into Vietnam, too many of our boys and girls have died, that we should never have gone to war, that our aims keep changing.

Well, lets see:

* We don't need to be there. But in accordance with the Iraq Liberation Act enacted -- but never enforced -- back in 1998: "it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government."

No amount of disinformation from war opponents can erase that law. It also says "that once the Saddam Hussein regime is removed from power in Iraq, the United States should support Iraq's transition to democracy by providing humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people and democracy transition assistance to Iraqi parties and movements with democratic goals …"

And given two nationwide elections in that country, with a third scheduled for next month, sounds as if we have been succeeding in those goals.

But we don't need to be there, to bring democracy to others? Is it only for us, then?

* We need to set a timetable for withdrawal. More articulate people than I have already said setting a timetable tells the enemy when he can expect to murder Iraqis unhindered by us -- just like Vietnam after we left -- and that he should lay low till we go.

So if we leave before the job is done, what will Abu Musab' al-Zarqawi do to the voters and elected officials? Back in January he said: "We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology."

Withdrawal would deny the Iraqi people what our law says we would bring them -- what we treasure for ourselves. But we need a timetable for withdrawal, and thereby intimidate the Iraqi people in to refusing to participate in this democracy that we enjoy for ourselves?

* It has turned into Vietnam. One of the few legitimate criticisms of Vietnam was that it went on with no end in sight.

But no more so than, say, the Revolutionary War or World War 2. Throughout the Revolutionary War, we stumbled from defeat to defeat, occasionally brightened by victories like Saratoga, Trenton and Cowpens, until the big blow of Yorktown decided the British to give it up.

The first six months of World War 2 were all disasters mitigated only by the heroism of our forces in defeats like Wake Island or daring actions like the Tokyo raid in April 1942.

And there was no end in sight for World War 2 until it ended, with sudden Japanese surrender.

What if Americans in 1775-81 had seen the Revolutionary War that way? "But we're not fighting for ourselves, we're fighting for someone else!" So democracy is good for us but not them?

Ironically, the party in opposition to the president and his policies tried the old "decorated-Vietnam-veteran-in-Congress-who-opposes-the-war" ploy again last week, with Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania calling for immediate withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq, the same way they used John Kerry as what was presumably credible opposition to the war last year.

Actually, it looked more like another attempt -- however ineptly executed, given the 403-3 defeat of the call for an immediate pullout -- to give the President a black eye than a serious effort to change US policy. But whatever the motivation, if we leave before the Iraqis are ready to fight off the terrorists on their own, those who have championed democracy will die as the terrorists establish New Afghanistan.

The last time we withdrew from a fight against tyranny, we got re-education camps, killing fields and boat people. Not that it mattered: "We don't care what happens over there, we just want our guys out," was the most widely held sentiment in favor of our Vietnam pullout.

Yet for anyone to claim not to care what happened over there, after we had fought to affect what did happen over there, constitutes proof they valued democracy for us but not for anyone else.

So did folks with yellow skin deserve tyranny the tyranny they got after we left? Don't people with brown skin, who have shown they want democracy by voting in two elections in the face of death threats, deserve it as much as we who face no death threats when we vote?

* Too many Americans have died. No, too many people died on 9-11, because a tyrannical state gave safe haven to terrorists.

Funding of, and material support to, terror is a trait of tyrannies -- not democracies -- going back to the Soviet Union: that's where the terrorists of the '60s-80s got all those AK-47s.

North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iraq have all been involved in terrorist activities; and despite those same naysayers, evidence abounds of close links between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda. The two actually drew up plans before we attacked Iraq to cooperate against us if we did. (Didn't you wonder where the terrorists went after we drove 'em from Afghanistan?)

And apart from the obvious -- that it was for training terrorists to hijack airplanes -- there has never been any explanation for that airliner we found at Salman Pak terrorist training camp outside Baghdad in April 2003.

So it's not as if we are dying for the Iraqis, as much as to protect ourselves, is it? Can you think of a better reason for democracy to be established in Iraq, than to keep terrorists from taking over?

Why not for brown people? Is it too good for them?

* We should never have gone to war. But al-Qaeda was already in Iraq before we attacked. The last time we left them alone we got 9-11. Were we supposed to sit on our hands until we got another 9-11? Would that justify war?

* Our aims keep changing. From what? The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 authorizes regime change and establishment of democracy in Iraq, and that's exactly what we have been doing. The Oct. 2, 2002 Joint Resolution of the Congress notes Iraqi support for terror and the harboring of those al-Qaeda terrorists noted above; and the president said on Sept. 20, 2001 of those who would harbor terrorist that "they will hand over the terrorists, or they will share their fate."

That's what happened to Saddam, isn't it?

So what's the real reason for calls to cut and run from Iraq? Is it that democracy is only for us?

Is democracy racist?

Gary Exelby is the editor of the Daily Statesman. E-mail him at gexelby@dailystatesman.com and read his earlier columns at http://exelby.vnovus.com.