Democracy at the Point of a Gun: In the past year I've heard it said many, many times by anti-warists that we are foolish to think we can institute democracy in the Middle East; that the idea of spreading democracy "at the point of a gun" is inherently corrupt. Christopher Hitchens was confronted with this argument when debating Mark Danner, and his reply was right on point. Hitchens said something to the effect that it isn't those seeking democracy at whom our guns are pointed, but those who stand between the would-be voters and the polls.

Now we have the AP photo of the facists whom our guns will not only be pointing at, but whose bodies will hopefully soon be rotting, riddled with United States bullets.

Thomas Friedman's NYT column today focuses on the importance of this image:

Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.

As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It's time we called them by their real names.

However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for.

However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for.

Indeed, they haven't even bothered to tell us otherwise. They have counted on the fact that the Bush administration is so hated around the world that any opponents will be seen as having justice on their side. Well, they do not. They are murdering Iraqis every day for the sole purpose of preventing them from exercising that thing so many on the political left and so many Europeans have demanded for the Palestinians: "the right of self-determination."

Worth investigating as well is the circumstances by which the AP photographer was able to capture this image and the reaction on the left of this inquiry.