Re: I'm sure many more liberals want to comment - Re: Bush's 'folly' is ending in victory
- From: CB <anonymousewho@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:44:44 -0700 (PDT)
On Mar 25, 12:24 pm, El Castor <No_...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:11:40 -0700 (PDT), CB <anonymouse...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Mar 25, 7:21 am, CB <anonymouse...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Bush's 'folly' is ending in victory
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | March 25, 2009
'MARKETS without bombs. Hummers without guns. Ice cream after dark.
Busy streets without fear." So began Terry McCarthy's report from Iraq
for ABC's World News Sunday on March 15, one of a series the network
aired last week as the war in Iraq reached its sixth anniversary.
A nationwide poll of Iraqis reveals that "60 percent expect things to
get better next year - almost three times as many as a year and a half
ago," McCarthy continued. "Iraqis are slowly discovering they have a
future. We flew south to Basra, where 94 percent say their lives are
going well. Oil is plentiful here. So is money."
In another report two nights later, ABC's correspondent characterized
the Iraqi capital as "a city reborn: speed, light, style - this is
Baghdad today. Where car bombs have given way to car racing. Where a
once-looted museum has been restored and reopened. And where young
women who were forced to cover their heads can again wear the clothes
that they like."
One such young woman is dental student Hiba al-Jassin, who fled
Baghdad's horrific violence two years ago, but found the city
transformed when she returned last fall. "I'm just optimistic," she
told McCarthy. "I think we are on the right path."
ABC wasn't alone in conveying the latest glad tidings from Iraq.
"Iraq combat deaths at 6-year low," USA Today reported on its front
page last Wednesday. The story noted that in the first two months of
2009, 15 US soldiers were killed in action - one-fourth the number
killed in the same period a year ago, and one-tenth the 2007 toll. The
reduction in deaths reflects the reduction in violence, which has
plummeted by 90 percent since former President Bush ordered General
David Petraeus to implement a new counterinsurgency strategy - the
"surge" - in early 2007. Even in northern Iraq, where al-Qaeda is
still active, attacks are down by 70 percent.
In the wake of improved security have come political reconciliation
and compromise. Iraq's democratic government continues to mature, with
ethnic and religious loyalties beginning to yield to broader political
concerns.
The Washington Post reports that the country's foremost Shiite
politician, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, has formed an alliance
with Saleh al-Mutlak, an outspoken Sunni leader. It is a development
that suggests "the emergence of a new axis of power in Iraq centered
on a strong central government and nationalism" - a dramatic change
from the sectarian passions that fueled so much bloody agony in 2006
and 2007. In the recent provincial elections, writes the Post's
Anthony Shadid, Maliki's party won major gains, with the prime
minister "forgoing the slogans of his Islamist past for a platform of
law and order." Despite his erstwhile reputation as a Shiite hard-
liner, Maliki now echoes Mutlak's call for burying the hatchet with
supporters of Saddam Hussein's overwhelmingly Sunni Baath Party.
Those elections were yet another blow to the conviction that
constitutional democracy and Arab culture are incompatible. For the
440 seats to be filled, more than 14,000 candidates and some 400
political parties contended - a level of democratic competition that
leaves American elections in the dust. A Jeffersonian republic of
yeoman smallholders Iraq will never be. But over the past six years it
has been transformed from one of the most brutal tyrannies on earth to
an example of democratic pluralism in the heart of the Arab world.
For a long time the foes of both the Iraq war and the president who
launched it insisted that none of this was possible - that the war was
lost, that there was no military solution to the sectarian slaughter,
that the surge would only make the violence worse. Victory was not an
option, the critics declared; the only option was to partition Iraq
and get out. Time and again it was said that the war would forever be
remembered as Bush's folly, if not indeed as the worst foreign policy
mistake in US history.
Even now, with a stubbornness born of partisan hostility or political
ideology, there are those who cannot bring themselves to utter the
words "victory" and "Iraq" in the same sentence. But six years after
the war began, it is ending in victory. As in every war, the price of
that victory was higher than we would have wished. The price of defeat
would have been far higher.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/200....
I initially supported the war, but I've been skeptical for a long
time. This may well be a "victory", and beneficial for the West in the
long run, but I think the ultimate outcome won't be apparent for many
years. More money flowing into the coffers of Muslims may or may not
in the end prove to be a good thing. Personally, I suspect we would
have been better off using the money that we spent on the war to build
nuclear power plants and reduce or eliminate our dependence on Arab
oil.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
As to nuclear power I'm not willing to talk freely in support of
expanding that, until I'm willing to take my share of the waste stored
next door.
Charlie
.
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