America Spreads Democracy

America and her allies defeated fascism in WWII and communism in the cold war.

The War on Terror is, by some accounts, barely 3 years old and already showing promise.

The Taliban were defeated and Al Qaida routed in Afghanistan and peaceful elections have just been held in that country.

While Iraq is a work in progress, things are moving in the right direction.

JOHN PODHORETZ writing in The New York Post, thinks the current US foreign policy of spreading democracy around the world may have influenced events in the Ukraine.

A strong argument can be made that America's conduct over the past three years in fighting the War on Terror against Islamic extremists has borne surprising fruit in the glorious and thrilling display of liberty in the streets of Kiev.

Millions of Ukrainians are creating an entirely new kind of democratic revolution: They've simply refused to let their election be stolen by a government run by a kleptocratic mafia, and they've taken to the streets of the capital. As their peaceful, high-spirited, optimistic and profoundly moving protest has grown over the past weeks, it has taken an amazing turn.

This is what the regimes like Iran and Syria really fear, the spread of democracy.

Like the Wizard of Oz, they use smoke and mirrors to try and fool the masses. Using passion themes such as, the US wants to rule the world, the US only wants your oil or the US wants to kill Islam. But just like the Wizard, the curtain of ignorance is being lifted and the Wizard exposed.

And who is it that is lifting the curtain of ignorance? Don't look to main stream media, they are part of the smoke and mirrors. Look to the bloggers.

The blogger Tulip Girl (tulipgirl.com), an American living in Kiev, published a beautiful letter from her Ukrainian friend Lena last week. Ignore the grammatical problems and revel in it:

"Quite recently I didn't believe that my people able to resist to violence and humiliation. Two months ago I guessed that I live in the worst country in the world. I was oppressed when I could not see a dignity in my fellow citizens, willingness to freedom and happiness. . . . Now I can see that they are not passive mammals who want just to dig [a] comfortable burrow, to generate they own posterity and to finish life in poverty, pretending that there is no another way.

"Since Nov. 22 there are not a crowd on the main square of my country. This is the PEOPLE. This is the NATION. Love, faith and hope filled up a whole space of capital of my country."

PODHORETZ sums up with this.

To what extent the Ukrainian revolution has been influenced by American evangelizing about the power of freedom and democracy is something we won't know for a while. But we can be sure it played some kind of role — and that's an unintended consequence of which we can all be deeply, deeply proud. And another reason to give thanks for the sacrifice of those who are fighting for freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The dictators in Syria and Iran know, from within or without, they are next.