Violence continues to rage in Iraq, even after the elections. The appeasers, like Teddy Chappaquiddick Kennedy, would have us turn tail and give up everything we have accomplished so far in Iraq. But the violence is to be expected, as it belies the desperation of the Sunni/Wahhabi/Islamist/al-Qaeda murdering thugs. Did any rational person expect the terrorists to roll over in a few days? Not a rational person like Victor Davis Hanson.

Yesterday, Hanson spelled out “Ten reasons to support democracy in the Middle East.” As usual, VDH’s argument is the epitome of educated clarity. His historical analogies are flawless.

To some of us, Hanson’s beliefs should be obvious, e.g., democracy is the fairest means for organizing society; democracy draws accountability to the people who do the voting; Arabs and Muslims are people, just like the rest of us, and are not somehow intrinsically incapable of embracing pluralism (as the Leftists, with their repressed racist tendencies, would have us believe).

It is difficult, if not impossible, to find a fault in Hanson’s reasoning -- unless of course you are a follower of Senator Kennedy or Osama Bin Laden. Below are a few snippets from Hanson’s ten democratic tenets, but I encourage you to read his full text:

1. It is widely said that democracies rarely attack other democracies. ...

2. More often than not, democracies arise through violence — either by threat of force or after war with all the incumbent detritus of humiliation, impoverishment, and revolution. ...

3. Democracies are more likely to be internally stable, inasmuch as they allow people to take credit and accept blame for their own predicaments. ...

4. The democratic idea is contagious. ...

5. In the case of the Muslim world, there is nothing inherently incompatible between Islam and democracy. ...

6. Democracy brings moral clarity and cures deluded populaces of their false grievances and exaggerated hurts. ...

7. We fret rightly about the spread of weapons of mass destruction. But the truth is that we worry mainly about nukes in the hands of autocracies like China, Iran, or North Korea. No American loses sleep that the UK or France has deadly missiles. ...

8. The promotion of democracy abroad by democracy at home is internally consistent and empowers rather than embarrasses a sponsoring consensual society. ...

9. By promoting democracies, Americans can at last come to a reckoning with the Cold War. If it was wrong then to back a shah or Saudi Royal family ("keep the oil flowing and the Commies out") or to abandon Afghanistan after repelling the Soviets, it is surely right now not to repeat the error of realpolitik...

10. Like it or not, a growing consensus has emerged that consumer capitalism and democracy are the only ways to organize society. ...

Democracy was not our first, but rather out last choice in the Middle East. For decades we have promoted Cold War realpolitik and supported thugs whose merit was simply that they were not as bad as a murderous Saddam or Assad (true enough), while the Arab world has gone from kings and dictators to Soviet puppets, Pan-Arabists, Islamists, and theocrats. Democracy in some sense is the last chance. It alone offers constitutional guarantees of free speech, minority rights, and an independent judiciary — a framework, a system, a paradigm in which naturally savage humans, prone to all sorts of awful things, as the 20th century attests, can somehow get along. Given the savagery of the modern Middle East that would say quite a lot.