The birth of democracy in Iraq is one of the great positive

The words of Ernest Istook — “The birth of democracy in Iraq is one of the great positive changes of our era.” — are spoken with the weight of history pressing upon them. They call to mind the agony of war and the hope of renewal, the tearing down of tyranny and the planting of a fragile seed in the dust of conflict. To name it a birth is to acknowledge both struggle and promise: for all births come with pain, yet they also bring the possibility of new life.

The birth of democracy is never simple. In the land of Iraq, where ancient empires once rose and fell along the Tigris and Euphrates, the soil was already rich with the memory of kings and conquerors. To attempt the planting of freedom there was to wage a battle not only against violence and division, but against centuries of rule by iron hand. Istook’s words proclaim that despite these trials, the emergence of even the smallest flame of democracy was among the greatest changes of modern times.

The ancients remind us that the rise of new orders often emerges from chaos. Consider Athens, where democracy first took root. It was born not in peace but in the turbulence of reforms, uprisings, and the overthrow of tyrants. Many thought the experiment fragile, even doomed — and yet it produced philosophers, orators, and citizens whose ideas still guide the world. So too, the hope in Iraq was that out of destruction might come renewal, that a people long silenced might find their voice.

To call it a positive change is not to deny the cost, nor to claim perfection. Rather, it is to recognize that every step toward liberty, however frail, is a victory against despair. For when men are given the chance to speak, to vote, to dream of governing themselves, they taste a freedom that no tyrant can fully erase. Even if stumbled, even if marred, the act of reaching toward democracy is itself a transformation of the human spirit.

Let the generations learn: freedom is not granted as a gift from rulers, but wrested from the jaws of history through blood, endurance, and hope. The birth of democracy, whether in ancient Athens or modern Iraq, is never without travail, but it is always a sign of humanity’s longing for dignity. Istook’s words, though spoken of one time and place, carry the eternal lesson that even in the darkest eras, the striving for liberty is the greatest positive change a people can achieve.