The naming this week of a council to help America rule Iraq is a case of one step forward, one step back. We’ve long supported the involvement of free Iraqis in helping to govern free Iraq, helping to lift from American troops some of the burdens of occupation. But if America is going to elevate unelected Iraqis to a governing role, we might as well choose ones that are friendly to our interests. There’s no sense sending American troops over to fight a war and then in stalling new leaders that are just as statist, sclerotic, misogynist, anti-Israel and anti-American as the old ones. If the Iraqi people want to elect such leaders that is one thing. But for America to install them is something entirely different. It’s the sort of thing that causes dictators in the region not to take us seriously and causes the Iraqis who do share our values to doubt our true intentions. So it was disappointing to see that among those America reportedly named to the 25-member governing council were two members of the Dawa party, an Islamist party that is ideologically hostile to freedom, Israel and the West. Not to mention the secretary general of Iraq’s Communist party. And Ayad Allawi, the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, whose plat form is basically Baathism without Saddam. And Adnan Pachachi, an Iraqi diplomat during the 1967 war against Israel. As well as a representative of the Axis of Evil regime in Iran in the person of a leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Aziz Hakim.

We’d like to see some of these characters interviewed on American television and asked whether they support women having the right to vote and to drive, whether they support Israel’s right to exist in peace as a Jewish state within secure and recognized borders, whether they support free enterprise, whether they support an eventual Islamic revolution in America, whether they support the protests aimed at ousting the theocracy in Iran. We’d bet the Americans who sent troops to die to liberate Iraq would be profoundly disappointed with the answers. There are Iraqis who share American values. They are mostly clustered around the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, whose presence on the council leaves us with at least some hope. Why many of Mr. Chalabi’s top aides were left off the council in favor of this collection of Islamists and a Communists would be a good question for some of Mr. Chalabi’s friends in Washington to delve into.