A Must Read on the US, the Devil, and Iraq

Excellent, excellent Fareed Zakaria article on the Iraqi Elections. After noting the muted and/or downright hostile response of the Radical Left to the events in Afghanistan, Zakaria warns them to brace for the even worse news of a democratic Iraq. The article contains a most damning anecdote concerning the America-Haters:

The current issue of Foreign Affairs has an exchange between two scholars, Tony Smith and Larry Diamond. Smith accuses Diamond, a longtime supporter of human rights, of making a "pact with the devil" by working (briefly) for the United States in postwar Iraq. Diamond, who had opposed the war, responds: "I do not regard the post-war endeavor as a pact with the devil. Let Smith and other critics visit Iraq and talk to Iraqis who are organizing for democracy, development, and human rights. Let them talk to the families that lived under constant, humiliating, Baathist rule. Let them see some of the roughly 300 mass graves of opponents of the regime who were brutally slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands. Then they will find out who the devil really was." I can't say it better.