James Kirchick: Off the Fence

Over the weekend, Iraq held parliamentary elections. Twelve million people—some 62 percent of the electorate—made it out to the polls, numbers that would make any American politician envious. This number is even more remarkable given the threat of violence that always hangs over Iraq and that was especially pronounced during the vote: Insurgents promised vengeance against any Iraqi who dared to partake in the democratic process, and a series of bombings killed 38 people. Nonetheless, the election was widely regarded as free and fair.

While governments around the world, the United Nations, and election observer groups all praised the courage of the Iraqi people and the progress they have made in the seven years since the downfall of Saddam Hussein, the vote was a source of laughter for John Stewart, the pied piper of Generation-X liberals. Recently named the Left’s most influential journalist by The Daily Beast, Stewart was chosen as “America’s most trusted newscaster” in a poll conducted by Time last year, so he’s more than just a comedian, but a major cultural force. Stewart led off a recent newscast with a segment about the election mockingly titled, “Arabian Rights,” juxtaposing news clips of poll-related violence with TV talking heads praising the vote as a “success.” What follows is a series of ham gags, including images of Iraqis inserting their votes into ballot boxes to the sounds of a paper-shredder. Forwarding the meme that the Iraq War was “unilateralist,” there are the requisite jokes about the measly contributions made by the Coalition of the Willing (in the eyes of some, an international action is “illegitimate” and “illegal” unless it earns the favor of France, Germany, Russia, and China). This charge was insulting when Michael Moore used it six years ago in his Fahrenheit 9/11—mocking President Bush’s listing of Poland as a partner in Iraq, which earned Moore the brickbats of Polish critics who compared his film to totalitarian propaganda—and it is no less so today. And it is all the more hypocritical coming from a liberal left that sees conservative foreign policy as being all swagger and bravado and not much else.

Given the nauseating segment he produced, Stewart would have been better off just ignoring recent events in Iraq. But ridiculing the democratic project there and diminishing its signal achievements has become a crucial aspect of the anti-war Left’s discourse, as they are wedded to the belief that Iraq was the most disastrous foreign policy undertaking in American history. In the worldview of Stewart and his viewers, who clap like seals at his every utterance, Iraq is inextricably associated with President George W. Bush, who couldn’t do anything right. In his 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush said that, “the establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.” So even though we are beginning to see the potential for such a watershed, since Bush predicted it, it must be wrong.

And so today we witness the sad spectacle in which the American Left’s most influential cultural voice openly mocks a democratic election in a country brutalized by decades of Stalinist terror, has nothing to say to the vast majority of Iraqis who risked their lives to participate in that election and views the violence perpetrated by Islamic Fascists against them as a laughing matter. Last summer, Christopher Hitchens wrote a thoughtful essay on “the smug satire of liberal humorists,” his chief complaint being that they are mere water-carriers for the Democratic Party and the Left in general, reluctant to mock members of their own team. Whereas this biased posture was barely defensible when Republicans ruled the roost, it has become utterly tiresome now that liberals are in charge. It is a testament to the enduring quality of domestic political venom that this partisanship would extend as far away as Mesopotamia, where the brave people of Iraq have become pawns in a cable comedian’s shtick.