There are numbers of people on the left, in the United States and abroad, who have declared that the Iraqis and other Arabs fighting against the American army in Iraq are a “legitimate resistance”. Now, I don’t want this to turn into a warblog, but I have to ask – resistance against what?

The stated aim of the United States is to turn over control of the country to the Iraqis by mid-summer, with elections following within six months, and possibly much sooner. If the people trying to kill Americans are so sure of the rightness of their cause, and so sure that they represent the majority of Iraqis, why don’t they just wait a few months and win bloodlessly at the polls?

Answer: they don’t want democracy, the fear it. Their acts of murder and brutality are meant to intimidate Iraqis as much as they are to drive away our soldiers. These “insurgents” (terrorists) hope to return to the glory days of Baathist rule – a small minority running the country for their own ends through fear and force.

The good news is that the rest of the country isn’t having any. Many of the thugs employed by Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr have been killed by Iraqi citizens. Now, frankly, death in a dark alley isn’t the best way to handle this, but these men are reaping what they’ve sown.

I don’t know how things in Iraq will turn out. Possibly the country will end up partitioned into Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish states. More likely, democracy will slowly take root as it has in South Africa’s black community and former Communist states like Nicaragua. There’s always the shadow of Man With Gun, lurking and watching for an opportunity.

But whatever their fate, it’s up to the Iraqis to settle it, and they will, one way or another.