Given the triumph of Islamist parties in elections in Turkey and Pakistan, how likely is it that elections would result in a fundamentalist takeover of Iraq?

Democracy is a risky venture. The National Socialist Party was elected in 1933 in Germany, a nation that was highly educated, producing a tremendous number of Nobel laureates. Democracy is risky, but the case we need to make is that you can have an Islamic party but favor a secular government. You see it being made in nations like Turkey. That argument is increasingly being made in Iran. Democracy is tough, but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternatives. I don't like what happened in the midterm elections. Does that mean we shouldn't have democracy?

I love that we're on the side of freedom in Iraq. We're saying Arabs have the capacity to govern themselves -- a few years ago people were saying just the opposite. If you stretch back and examine the argument in 1998, you had people saying in response to me, "There's no Thomas Jefferson in Iraq." Well, there's no Thomas Jefferson in the United States. Our job isn't to pick an Iraqi leader; it's to let Iraq pick a leader.

Are you saying that the argument that democracy won't work in Iraq is racist?

It's not just racist and condescending, but part of it is racist and condescending. If you look at what's happening north of the 36th parallel in the Kurdish country, they're saying we're tired of killing, and they're building democratic institutions.

But the Kurds aren't dealing with ethnic divisions right now. Once Saddam is gone, isn't there a possibility the country will devolve into a bloody civil war between the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds?

Is it possible you can have a bloody civil war? Sure. I think it's unlikely, but it's always the fear when you're talking about trying to organize democracy. We had a bloody civil war in the United States, an awful one.

[What's going on in Kurdish country] is cause for hope, not cause for despair. I think we can make this a success. If we are successful at liberating Iraq and five years from now you can go to Baghdad and the people of Iraq thank you on the street because you lifted their standard of living, you'll find very few people who will say [it was a mistake].

There are all kinds of problems with an operation like this. There are all kinds of things that could cause us to fail. There's no shortage of things I think the president has done wrong, but in my heart I agree with what he wants to get done, so I'm on this committee, and I'm going to stay the course.

The other day I was talking to an Iraqi exile who is in graduate school at Harvard. He was in Iraq during the first Gulf War. He hates Saddam, but he doesn't trust the United States at all. He points to our support for murderous regimes in Chile and Argentina and our support for the Shah of Iran and for Saddam in the '80s, and he says he believes the United States is going to establish a military junta in Iraq and exploit its oil. Why should he believe that the U.S. government cares about making life better for Iraqis?

He's been listening too much to his Harvard professors. You can't reach back in American history for the worst mistake we ever made and use it as a rationalization not to try something good.

I could go back and say, "Look what we did in Guatemala." It was a great tragedy of the Cold War. But we learned from our mistake in Guatemala, even though we airbrush what happened there.

I don't blame [the Harvard student] at all. I could make a stronger case based on things the United States has done in Iraq since then that, if I were in Iraq, would cause me not to support the United States. We tried to organize the Kurdish opposition in '95 and '96, and we weren't there when fighting got real serious. I remember what happened when the United States promised to be with them.

[Because of what we've done,] I don't think we will necessarily be welcomed in. But if it's multinational, especially with Arab participation, there's no doubt if we stay the course and produce this liberation, the Iraqis will be grateful.

We know what a terrible thing we did after the Gulf War to encourage Iraqis to rise up and then not follow through in helping them. But you can't take the worst America has done and then cite it as reason not to try and do anything good. Unfortunately that argument is all too common among liberals.

Why do you feel liberals should support this war?

Do liberals care about freedom? Do they care about human rights and repression? These are central to our core values. How is it not possible for us to come out in favor of the need to liberate Iraq, to walk away from the truly racist policies that aligned us with dictators because they satisfied our economic interest? Liberals should be embracing this change. Unless liberals do, it's likely to be done wrong.

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