Of Iraq, that is.

Powerline forwards information on some outstanding military results in Tal Afar, as reported at Gateway Pundit, and includes a link to a White House Press Release of the visit to the White House on Tuesday, 13 September 2005 of President Talabani of Iraq.

President Talabani spoke eloquently of Iraqi and American militaries fighting side-by-side against these jihadists who so desperately want the Iraqi Democratic experiment to fail. President Talabani described his country, rightly, as the "world's youngest democracy." He also correctly identifies the enemies of Iraq and Coalition Forces as the enemies of humanity:

The so-called jihadists want to impose oppression and dictatorship and worst kind of society on our people. For that they are not only -- so they are not only the enemy of Iraq, but they are the enemy of humanity, the enemy of real Islam, and the enemy of all Middle East peoples. Together with our American friends and partners, we will defeat them.

President Talabani is an unabashed admirer of America and our ideals.

We are proud that one day will come -- as soon as possible, of course, we hope -- that American troops can proudly return home, and we tell them, thank you, dear friends, and you are faithful to friendship. Of course, we are sorry for the sacrifices of American people in Iraq, but I think a great people like America has a mission in the history -- they have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of their sons in the war -- first world war, second world war, and in liberating people in Afghanistan, Kurdistan. And the great leader, Mr. George W. Bush is continuing the same mission of the American people. We are grateful. We are grateful for American generosity, and we honor -- we honor -- sacrifices of America in Iraq -- and everywhere, not only in Iraq.

Some cynics might retort, "of course, he's Kurdish," but perhaps in this regard President Talabani is not so different than Eastern Europeans today, who likewise applaud the heroism and commitment to liberty that helped liberate half of two continents and then some from the scourge of Communism. He's lived under tyranny, he's of a people who have suffered greatly under dictatorship, and so he has no ability to neither excuse the Tyrant nor weigh the lives of many on some moral scale of equivalence. ("Bad, but no worse than others.") No, he makes an unequivocal stand upon the rightness of his cause, and the honor of America joining his country in this fight.

President Talabani had something to say to critics of the war, as well:

To those in America, in other countries, still ask of war of liberation in Iraq, if it was right -- the right decision. I say, please, please, come to Iraq, to visit the mass graves, to see what happened to the Iraqi people, and to see what now is going on in Iraq. To those who talk of stability, I say, Saddam imposed the stability of the mass graves. To the terrorists, I say, you will never win; freedom will win in Iraq.

Dictatorships can be very stable, tyranny can be neat and tidy. Hitler made the trains run on time, no doubt because tardy conductors became dead ones. For decades, the same "progressive voices" of the left harshly criticized American Foreign Policy as amoral, if not immoral, in valuing stable friends over human rights or the aspirations of oppressed people. Anti-war movements during Vietnam in large measure gained moral standing on that basis, that our friends fighting communism could be rightly perceived as just as bad as the evil they were fighting. The great animating moral force of a human rights orientation, however misguided and naive in practice, had the appeal it had because of a progressive vision of the Rights of Man that transcended national boundaries.

And, in fact, are not these great themes essentially and originally, American?

And isn't the Foreign Policy of this American President, in fact and act, the most progressive in the advancement of liberty and democracy the Nation has ever known? Against bitter and strident political opposition?

Think of it another way. The opponents of the war in Iraq -- political opponents mind you, not military ones, although political opposition helps military opposition to some degree -- are frequently bewailing the need of the U.S. to address the root causes of Islamic Terrorism. For these misguided ones, who view every disadvantage in life as an excuse for bad behavior or a wrong to be redressed, everything is class. Wealth. The poor and downtrodden Muslims. Nevermind the stark contradiction that most Jihadists and Wahhabists are actually from the elites within the Middle East (think the 15 wealthy Saudi ne'erdowells who were part of 9/11).

Poverty is no root cause of anything in the Middle East. Poverty is the result of the root cause of Dictatorship and corruption in the non-democratic regimes of the Middle East. And these regimes promote an "it's all about them" hatred, of Jews, of Christians, of the West, of America. The illusory strength of a Bin Laden or Zarqawi, tweaking the nose of America, goes a long way to mobilize and motivate these (otherwise) aimless youths.

Treat root causes? Okay, how about this. Let's take the fight directlly to Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and put an ultimatum out there to any State Sponsor of Terrorism. Let's belittle and expose these fanatics for the deluded dreamers they really are. Let's show the youth of the Middle East, first the power and will and determination of American military might in toppling a couple of terrorist havens. We'll follow up with a heaping helping of "little d" democracy. They can watch as their erstwhile heroes crawl into caves or explain the hundreds of thousands of Muslims they've killed themselves, while America in response brings freedom.

Links: Basil's Blog, Outside the Beltway, The Anchoress, TMH's Bacon Bits, Dawn Patrol at Mudville Gazette