Freedom's on the March...
...But where's it going?

In a corallary to this previous post on the WaPo's article looking forward to BushCo's 2006 (which inevitably surmises what went wrong in 2005), Sidney Blumenthal over at Salon offers his recollections of the BushCo Adventure of 2005, when, like the good ship Poseiden, everything went upside down (note that the Salon link requires a subscription, or the viewing of a longish web ad, during which you can grab yourself more coffee). Here's the first wave that struck:

The first shift in his political fortunes came with his unprecedented intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, a woman who had lain in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, and whose husband’s effort to remove her feeding tube was upheld after 14 appeals in Florida courts, five federal law suits, and four refusals to accept the case by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bush had won the presidency in 2004 with an extraordinary outpouring of support from the religious right. So he rushed from his Texas ranch back to the White House in March to sign the bill transferring the case from state to federal courts. Throughout the month, the Republicans strutted and the Democrats cowered. Then, on March 21, the spell that had carried over from the election campaign was suddenly broken in a single stroke. The deus ex machina that descended onto this fervent scene was an awakening public. An ABC News poll found that 63 to 28 percent backed the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube and 67 to 19 percent believed that politicians urging that she be kept alive were demagogic and unprincipled.

Blumenthal wraps things up with BushCo's last great stab at greatness--the Iraqi vote of December 15:

Bush hoped to erase the year’s infamies with the election in Iraq on December 15, his ultimate turning point. He delivered five major speeches crafted by his new adviser on the National Security Council, Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and co-author of "Choosing Your Battles," based on his public opinion research showing that "the public is defeat phobic, not casualty phobic." In one speech, Bush mentioned "victory" 15 times, against a background embossed with the slogan "Plan for Victory," and the White House issued a document entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq."

On December 14, the president invited bipartisan groups of senators and representatives to White House briefings on the progress that would follow the election. Among those assembled in the Roosevelt Room were the president, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley -- and Peter Feaver, the polling expert. At the meeting with senators after the presentation, Bush called first on Senator John McCain, the Republican maverick, who gave an enthusiastic statement of support. A few more spoke. "Great, gotta go," said Bush. Afterwards, Feaver buttonholed senators to survey their opinions on the new approach.

Since the election of the Shiite slate that will hold power for four years, dedicated to an Islamic state allied with Iran, the president and his advisers have fallen eerily silent. As his annus horribilis draws to a close, Bush appears to have expended the turning points. Welcome to victory.

Hey, how is the aftermath of the Iraqi election going, anyway? Here's a report from the AP (via the WaPo), and it could be all sour grapes, but the grapes seem to be ripening:

Sunni Arab and secular groups refused Thursday to open discussions with the Shiite religious bloc leading in Iraq's parliamentary elections until a full review of the contested results is carried out.

Their refusal could deepen the political turmoil following a U.N. observer's endorsement of Iraq's Dec. 15 elections. The official said the results were credible and that the results should stand.

"We are not taking part in discussions," said Nasser al-Ani, a senior official in the main Sunni Arab coalition -- the Iraqi Accordance Front.

[...]

The United Nations official, Craig Jenness, said his U.N.-led international election assistance team found the elections to be fair, remarks that represented crucial support for Iraqi election commission officials, who refused opposition demands to step down. They have said they had found some instances of fraud that were enough to cancel the results in some places but not to hold another vote in any district.

Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni candidate who has joined forces with Allawi to protest what they have described as rampant fraud, said he was angered by Jenness' remarks.

He said without elaboration that the U.N. should "check our complaints and then express its views."

Allawi said the election commission should also take into account political violence before the vote.

"There were assassinations. We had numbers of people on my slate who had been killed, shot and killed, and supporters who have been killed. There were attempts to assassinate others, and they were badly injured," Allawi told CNN.

Speaking of freedom being on the march, Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey have a good summary at Newsweek on BushCo's push in 2005 to extend freedom and liberty to the world--a goal charted during President Bush's innaugural address back in January. Here are a few tidbits:

One of the administration’s strongest claims to spreading freedom in 2005 was the elections in Egypt. Staging the first multicandidate elections for president, Egypt seemed to support Bush’s thesis that events in Iraq were pushing other countries in the region to edge toward a more democratic future. But Egypt’s severely limited elections (with a handful of approved and constrained opposition parties) failed to live up to the hype. Security forces allegedly fired live ammunition and rubber bullets at voters in recent parliamentary elections, and by year’s end the only half-serious challenger to President Hosni Mubarak was jailed on charges of fraud. Ayman Nour was sentenced to five years of hard labor just two days after Bush declared 2005 to be an amazing year for liberty.

In a statement, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said the United States was “deeply troubled” by Nour’s conviction, saying it threw into doubt “Egypt’s commitment to democracy, freedom and the rule of law.” In his Inaugural Address, Bush said the promotion of democracy was “the urgent requirement of our nation’s security” and promised to use American influence “confidently in freedom’s cause.” One of his first tests in 2006 will be how confident he feels in using American influence (to the tune of $2 billion a year in aid) to promote freedom in Egypt.

[...]

The new year will be a critical test of Iraq’s emerging democracy, and its ability to pull a fractured country together. But even if the Shiite majority includes minority Sunnis in government, the new Iraq will test Bush’s thesis in another vital way. The whole premise of the mission in Iraq--and the promotion of freedom--is that a democratic government will help America’s national security. As the president said in his recent TV address, he believes the Iraqi vote “means that America has an ally of growing strength in the fight against terror.”

That may be true when it comes to fighting the insurgents in Iraq. But it’s less clear where an Iraqi government, led by religious Shiite parties, will stand in the broader war on terror--especially when it comes to jihadi groups supported by its neighbor. The new regime in Tehran is most definitely not an American ally in the fight against terror, yet the two main Iraqi Shiite parties have enjoyed decades of support from Iran. Iraq seems unlikely to become an Iranian-style theocracy, or an Iranian satellite state. But it also seems unlikely to join in a “fight against terror” with Iran or Iranian-backed groups.

Bush’s test in 2006 is not just about his commitment to the noble vision of his Inaugural Address. His real challenge is to show that democracy--whether gradual or dramatic--can really be the silver bullet in the war on terror.