Is Iraq Better or Worse?
by John Podhoretz
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September 28, 2004 -- JOHN Kerry has taken a new tack on Iraq. He accuses the president and Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of refusing to face "reality" because they express an upbeat view of Iraq's political future.
The "reality," say Kerry and his surrogates, is that the security situation is deteriorating, attacks on coalition forces are increasing and things are getting worse.
Question No. 1 is — worse than when?
Are things worse in Iraq than they were, say, six months ago? If you measure solely by the number of attacks against U.S. and Iraqi targets, the answer is undoubtedly yes. The insurgency has demonstrated a terrifying capacity for organized terror.
Their capacity is dispiriting and depressing. And that's the point of it: It has no military value. The terrorists will not win a single head-to-head fight against the United States. Their purpose is to make us feel that the chaos will never end and therefore we should cut our losses and get out.
Thus, if President Bush and Prime Minister Allawi were to take John Kerry's advice and face the "reality" he describes, they would have no choice but to throw up their hands in despair.
But the "reality" he describes is not reality. It is the prosecutor's brief in Kerry v. Bush.
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Prosecutors' briefs are not balanced and fair documents. They include everything and the kitchen sink — every factoid, however sketchy, that helps make the case for disaster, despair and disillusionment.
But if the security situation is worse than it was six months ago, the political situation is so dramatically improved that it's almost a miracle. In almost every respect, the transition to Iraqi sovereignty has gone better and has had greater success than anyone could have predicted half a year ago.
Six months ago, there were questions about whether the most important cleric in the country, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, might actually torpedo the formation of a sovereign interim government. His punk-thug rival, Muqtada al-Sadr, was declaring that neither he nor his punk-thug followers in the Mahdi Army would "allow" the sovereign government to function.
The Kurds in the north were panicking because they feared the Shiite complaints would inevitably cause the coalition to make concessions — concessions that would ensure Shiite domination of the country and impose Shiite religious law on Iraq.
Then came claims that longtime exile leader Ahmed Chalabi was a) running a counterfeiting ring, b) spying for Iran and c) using his nephew Salem as a hit man. These swirling rumors, along with a brutal search of Chalabi's house, resulted in gleeful headlines in the United States and elsewhere about how George Bush's favorite Iraqi had fallen so far from grace and was in fact a gangster himself.
So where are we today?
The interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, has proved to be resourceful and calming at the same time. The scurrilous charges against the Chalabis have been thrown out of court.
Sadr's personal army has been destroyed and he has been ejected from Najaf and its holy shrine without U.S. forces having to storm the place or fire a single shot at it. And why? Because Sistani, who only six months ago was stepping lightly around his thug rival, finally stepped up to the plate and basically told Sadr to get the hell out.
And the terrorists' concerted efforts to interrupt the oil and electricity flow in and out of the country have met surprisingly little success — because the Iraqi oil and electricity ministries, working with American reconstruction dollars, have gotten the pipelines repaired and the juice flowing again.
These are not just technical successes. These are all political successes. They all reflect the capacity of Iraqis to take control of their own futures. The handling of the Chalabi case suggests that Iraq's judiciary is not simply becoming a political tool to be deployed at the whim of whoever can get a judge to do his bidding.
And most important, because he and his people now have a stakehold in Iraq's future, Sistani and the Shiites refused to allow the holy city to become a swamp of civil disorder.
No one is denying, least of all President Bush, that these are dangerous days in Iraq. There is a case for pessimism, but then, there is always a case for pessimism. There's a case for optimism as well, a case based not in hope but in fact.
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Oh, and if we're wondering whether things are worse in Iraq, all we need do is look back two years, when Saddam Hussein was in power and an estimated 50,000 Iraqis (most of them children) were dying every year of malnutrition.
Not to mention having their limbs cut off and their families killed in front of them if they dared displease one of Saddam's psychotic sons.
It's more than safe to say Iraq was worse off then.
____________________________________________________
___________________________
September 28, 2004 -- JOHN Kerry has taken a new tack on Iraq. He accuses the president and Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of refusing to face "reality" because they express an upbeat view of Iraq's political future.
The "reality," say Kerry and his surrogates, is that the security situation is deteriorating, attacks on coalition forces are increasing and things are getting worse.
Question No. 1 is — worse than when?
Are things worse in Iraq than they were, say, six months ago? If you measure solely by the number of attacks against U.S. and Iraqi targets, the answer is undoubtedly yes. The insurgency has demonstrated a terrifying capacity for organized terror.
Their capacity is dispiriting and depressing. And that's the point of it: It has no military value. The terrorists will not win a single head-to-head fight against the United States. Their purpose is to make us feel that the chaos will never end and therefore we should cut our losses and get out.
Thus, if President Bush and Prime Minister Allawi were to take John Kerry's advice and face the "reality" he describes, they would have no choice but to throw up their hands in despair.
But the "reality" he describes is not reality. It is the prosecutor's brief in Kerry v. Bush.
________________________________________
Prosecutors' briefs are not balanced and fair documents. They include everything and the kitchen sink — every factoid, however sketchy, that helps make the case for disaster, despair and disillusionment.
But if the security situation is worse than it was six months ago, the political situation is so dramatically improved that it's almost a miracle. In almost every respect, the transition to Iraqi sovereignty has gone better and has had greater success than anyone could have predicted half a year ago.
Six months ago, there were questions about whether the most important cleric in the country, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, might actually torpedo the formation of a sovereign interim government. His punk-thug rival, Muqtada al-Sadr, was declaring that neither he nor his punk-thug followers in the Mahdi Army would "allow" the sovereign government to function.
The Kurds in the north were panicking because they feared the Shiite complaints would inevitably cause the coalition to make concessions — concessions that would ensure Shiite domination of the country and impose Shiite religious law on Iraq.
Then came claims that longtime exile leader Ahmed Chalabi was a) running a counterfeiting ring, b) spying for Iran and c) using his nephew Salem as a hit man. These swirling rumors, along with a brutal search of Chalabi's house, resulted in gleeful headlines in the United States and elsewhere about how George Bush's favorite Iraqi had fallen so far from grace and was in fact a gangster himself.
So where are we today?
The interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, has proved to be resourceful and calming at the same time. The scurrilous charges against the Chalabis have been thrown out of court.
Sadr's personal army has been destroyed and he has been ejected from Najaf and its holy shrine without U.S. forces having to storm the place or fire a single shot at it. And why? Because Sistani, who only six months ago was stepping lightly around his thug rival, finally stepped up to the plate and basically told Sadr to get the hell out.
And the terrorists' concerted efforts to interrupt the oil and electricity flow in and out of the country have met surprisingly little success — because the Iraqi oil and electricity ministries, working with American reconstruction dollars, have gotten the pipelines repaired and the juice flowing again.
These are not just technical successes. These are all political successes. They all reflect the capacity of Iraqis to take control of their own futures. The handling of the Chalabi case suggests that Iraq's judiciary is not simply becoming a political tool to be deployed at the whim of whoever can get a judge to do his bidding.
And most important, because he and his people now have a stakehold in Iraq's future, Sistani and the Shiites refused to allow the holy city to become a swamp of civil disorder.
No one is denying, least of all President Bush, that these are dangerous days in Iraq. There is a case for pessimism, but then, there is always a case for pessimism. There's a case for optimism as well, a case based not in hope but in fact.
____________________________________________________
Oh, and if we're wondering whether things are worse in Iraq, all we need do is look back two years, when Saddam Hussein was in power and an estimated 50,000 Iraqis (most of them children) were dying every year of malnutrition.
Not to mention having their limbs cut off and their families killed in front of them if they dared displease one of Saddam's psychotic sons.
It's more than safe to say Iraq was worse off then.
____________________________________________________
Comments
I think the jury is still out. History will decide this.
I am sure that if you asked a German after WWII if it were better off having been defeated and Hitler removed, most would have said no. The country was in ruins.
If Iraq decends into civil war and breaks apart, will all Iraqis rejoice at being liberated. Of course, this hasn't happened...so far.
The problem with the optomists (Republicans)is that our Congress and the electorate did not give George Bush a madate to indentify and destroy the axis of evil. We were still reeling from 9/11 and were told this was a necessary war to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and their imminent use by Saddam.
Whether Iraq in fact has been made better off by our efforts, completely ignores that fact this administration does not deserve another term. Has it occurred to you that if an administration would lie to the public about a matter as serious as war, it must think truth is a mere inconvenience when it comes to fiscal policy, social security, unemployment, education, etc.
Let me pose a question Bob. Let's say the CIA tells Bush Iran is having internal political problems which could be cured by purging hundreds of thousands of prodemocracy individuals. It is the CIA's opinion that the cause of freedom in Iran will be set back 50 years if this is allowed to occur. The Bush administration takes a poll and 90% of the American public would not support intervention to save the lives of prodemocratic forces within Iran.
Now is it acceptable for the administration, in order to gain support for a preemptive attack on Iran, to put out stories of Iran's complicity in 9/11, their growing nuclear threat, their intermediate range missiles, etc. all of which are based upon weak or uncertain intelligence. Perhaps staging a little invasion into Afghaninstan or Iraq by Iran to demonstrate their expansionist aims. In other words, do the ends justify the means? If our president believes he is correct, can he fabricate the rationale so the pill is easier to swallow. Or must our leaders say, "I know this is not a popular idea, but I have concluded that we must take action based upon these unpopular reasons".
You keep repeating the Democrat line that Bush lied to the Americans about WMD. The evidence is that he relied upon intelligence that was probably faulty, not that he lied. Kerry, Clinton, the CIA, British intelligence and most of the world community believed that Saddam did possess some stockpiles of WMD. This intelligence appears, by benefit of hindsight, to be erroneous. (It is still possible that these weapons were moved out of the country or hidden). The 9-11 report did not conclude that Bush fabricated intelligence or lied to the American people.
I do not know any basis to prefer Kerry over Bush. Kerry has stated multiple inconsistent position on the War on Terror and the War in Iraq. He has a singularly undistinguished career in the Senate and a dubious record as a Anti War politician. He seems to blow whichever way the winds of current opinion dictate. He seems to be a pessemist and defeatist very unlikely to finish the Iraq war as a winner. He is not a leader I would follow or recommend to anyone for the role of Commander in Chief.
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