(New York Times) Thomas L. Friedman - On Monday this newspaper ran a picture on the front page showing several Iraqi gunmen, in broad daylight and without masks, murdering two Iraqi election workers on a busy street in the heart of Baghdad. That picture really framed the stakes in this war. Some people in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world - for the first time ever in their region - are trying to organize an election to choose their own leaders and write their own constitution. As Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum pointed out, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves.
2004-12-24 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive