From
Scripps Howard:
The success of January's elections in Iraq, new flashes of democracy in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and massive rallies in Lebanon are causing some critics of the Iraq war to reconsider their skepticism of President Bush's Middle East strategy.
A few are pondering a question they once would have found unthinkable: Could Bush have been right about the war?
On the second anniversary of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, commentators, foreign policy experts and some politicians are re-examining their earlier views that toppling Saddam Hussein could make things worse in the Middle East.
National Public Radio analyst Daniel Schorr, often a critic of the war, recently recalled Bush's pre-war prediction that an Iraq free of Saddam could transform the region. "He may have had it right," Schorr wrote in the Christian Science Monitor.
Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a sharp war critic, has nevertheless allied himself with Bush's democracy campaign in the Middle East. "Any breakthrough we get there, whether it is in Lebanon or Egypt, is a step in the right direction and I support the president in that regard," he recently told reporters. Reid held out the possibility that he would give full credit to the president for starting a democracy boomlet in the region.
Of course, we can always count on John Kerry being on the wrong side of history...
Not all war critics are ready to give ground on Bush's Middle East strategy. Bush's losing opponent in last year's presidential race, Sen. John Kerry, was asked last week on CNN whether democracy's stirrings in the Middle East could be traced to Saddam's overthrow.
His answer: "No."
Some people just never learn...
