Michael Rubin wants to know

Career diplomats now undercut democracy in Iraq. On April 23, L. Paul Bremer delivered a speech in which he embraced former Iraqi army officers and senior Baathists. He promised to rehire teachers fired not for simple Baath-party membership, but rather for active service in the highest levels of Saddam’s party, an organization whose ideology is based on a combination of Italian Fascism and the Nazi ethnic chauvinism. Iraqis fear the Coalition will now terminate non-Baathist schoolteachers hired to replace the high-ranking Baathists. Simultaneously, senior State Department officials tell journalists that the U.S. may exclude Governing Council members who oppose re-Baathification from Iraq’s interim government. U.S. policy should support and not shun democrats.