Vindication

The people of Iraq have spoken, and in vast numbers. Between 62 and 70 percent of eligible Iraqi voters have showed the total intellectual and moral bankruptcy of what Tech Central Station's Stephen Schwartz calls the "Coalition of the Wrong" -- the wicked quasi-alliance of terrorists in Iraq, European and Arab governments, left-wing politicians and intellectuals, much of the world's media and chattering classes and other assorted cravens who have an emotional and political investment in the failure of the Iraq experiment.

Yesterday millions of Iraqis braved beheadings, bombings, shooting, long lines and confusion to vindicate their right to liberty and a government of their choice. For their temerity, the voters got a purple stain on their finger, and the right to risk their own murder, and that of their families by the piratical beasts the loathsome Michael Moore terms the Iraqi "Minutemen."

There's a long way to go in Iraq. The struggle is not done. There is no assurance whatever that Iraqis will be successful in forming a government, much less developing republican institutions. There's a strong chance that the act of faith of yesterday's voters will yet be in vain, and that Iraq will fall back into the squalor and communal violence from which the blood sacrifices of our heroic soldiers, and that of our Iraqi and coalition allies, rescued it.

But there's hope too, as we all saw yesterday, that Iraqis can yet redeem their country, and make a decent future for their children. Despite the bombs of the terrorists, the beheadings, the murders of children, teachers and poll workers, millions of people took a stand yesterday and declared for liberty and a normal life.

Now, more than ever, it matters that Americans stand with them, and stay behind President Bush. This work must be seen through to the end. Whatever happens, the faces of the voters in our morning papers, and the ballots they cast show us that our cause is right and just. The votes yesterday are themselves a condemnation of the deluded and truly evil people who seek to cut-and-run from Iraq, who would sabotage the efforts of the troops, and set their sacrifices at naught. If nothing else, decent people everywhere can rejoice in the all-too-obvious chagrin of these wicked accomplices of the Baathist and Al Qaeda murderers, who seek to force our abandonment of these voters and their fledgling state to the criminals and killers.