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It seems that our pres doesn't realize that voters can vote for terrorists. I wonder what Bush will do if the Iraqis vote for similar candidates like the Palestinians did?
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Mavdog, you make a VERY good point with your first sentence.
I agree that President Bush's philosophy leaves him too eager to gamble on democracy "just happening" to work out in favor of a reasonable regime. Both Republican and Democrat administrations - especially their State Departments - often treat Israeli citizens' rights to self-defense against terrorist threats as no more legitimate than the Palestinian terrorists who have constantly attacked them in the last fifty-plus years. (Hence these endless series of "peace talks" and roadmaps that do nothing to end the bloodshed there.) Our leaders' realpolitik with regard to Israel/Palestine hasn't helped matters, but the ultimate responsibility still lies with the Palestinian leaders to love their own citizens more than they hate Israeli Jews. Palestinian leadership has received billions of aid dollars througout the past few decades, and yet they go nowhere because they embezzle that aid and deny their own people basic democratic freedoms.
And you're right: at this point, Palestinians will only elect another set of terrorist sympathizers.
However, I believe the Iraqis are much less inclined to elect terrorist-sympathizers. Despite what Saddam might have hoped, the Iraqi people haven't been systematically brainwashed into endorsing either militant Islam or Jew-scapegoating, unlike the Palestinians under close watch of Arafat and the PA. The Iraqis are struggling to become aware that they are the masters of their own destiny and perhaps, through the Shia-Sunni tensions, the cause of (and solution to) their own internal frustrations. These elections will only help bring that awareness into the open, but of course nothing is guaranteed.
As the elections showed, the Islamic terrorists have very limited influence. While Iraq won't be Israel anytime soon, comparing its elections with the Palestinian elections is comparing apples and oranges.