Like real life, Iraq is a near-blinding mass of prismatic shards right now, the "real reality" of the situation very much depending upon your stance when the light shards hit you.
War and Bush supporter Mark Steyn says things are "really" pretty good:
- Then there are the naysayers at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who, as we now know, were claiming before the war that nothing could be done, nothing would go right, patently absurd to think Iraq can ever be a democracy, old boy. Topple Saddam, install his replacement, and pretty soon Iraq would be reverting to type. "Military coup could succeed coup until an autocratic Sunni dictator emerged who protected Sunni interests. With time he could acquire WMD."
I have no problem with that. If the best-case scenario is that Iraq winds up as agreeable as my beloved New Hampshire, the worst case was laid out by yours truly in this space three years ago, on September 27, 2001, when I acknowledged that a post-Saddam Iraq might wind up merely with "a thug who's marginally less bloody...."
....That's still the bottom line. It is the stability of the Middle East - the stability of the Ba'athists, Ayatollahs, Sauds, the Arafats and Mubaraks - that has enabled it to export its toxins. At a bare minimum, we need a kind of Sam Goldwyn Doctrine: I'm sick of the old dictators-for-life. Bring me some new dictators-for-life.
But in Iraq we are already way beyond that. After the predictions of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and a mass refugee crisis and a humanitarian catastrophe and wall-to-wall cholera and dysentery all failed to pan out, the naysayers fell back on predictions of imminent civil war. But the civil war's as mythical as the universal dysentery.
There is a problem in the Sunni Triangle and in certain Baghdad suburbs. If you look at the figures for August, over half the 71 US fatalities that month died in one province - al-Anbar, which covers much of the Sunni Triangle.
Most of the remainder were killed dispatching young Sadr's goons in Najaf or in operations against other Sunni Triangulators in Samarra, with a couple of isolated incidents in Mosul and Kirkuk. In 11 of Iraq's 18 provinces, not a single US soldier died.
....In two-thirds of the country, municipal government has been rebuilt, business is good, restaurants are open, life is as jolly as it has been in living memory. This summer the Shia province of Dhi Qar, south-east of Baghdad, held the first free elections in its history, electing secular independents and non-religious parties to its town councils.
The Kurdish North, which would be agitating for secession if real civil war were looming, is for the moment content to be Scotland. The Sunni Triangle, meanwhile, looks like being the fledgling Iraqi federation's Northern Ireland for a while to come.
Article comments
1 - Tim Hall
I'd treat anything by the ridiculous Mark Steyn with a very generous pinch of salt; he's a wingnut, about as credible as his opposite number on the left, Robert Fisk. Both have achieved popularity by telling blind ideologues whatever they want to hear, and feeding their prejudices.
2 - Shark
Bush Perspective: (cue Ray Stevens) "Everything is beauti-ful..."
9/21/04
American GIs Dead Since War Began: 1037 (oh, wait... what time is it...?)
Total Wounded: 7125
Um, do those beheaded Americans (who didn't have jobs in the great economy and had to take jobs pimping in Iraq) count?
Feh.
Did I mention:
We'll.
Never.
Get.
Out.
Of.
Iraq.
?
PS: Viet
Nam
ring
a
bell?
3 - Mark Saleski
and amazingly (or may not) pres. bush took your last quote from the post there and spun it up to kerry having said that "we'd be better off if saddam was still in office".
man, this world's gone crazy.
4 - Eric Olsen
that took some spinning, although any hint favoring Saddam over anything was probably not terribly wise on Kerry's part
5 - Hal Pawluk
It still appears to me that the best we can hope for is a pseudo-representative government that allows the US to pull out, leading to an autocracy, followed by a coup or civil war within ten to twenty years.
In the meantime we will have missed our best chance to bring the terrorist threat to a bearable level because our invasion increased that threat while damaging the international cooperation necessary to effectively fight terrorists.
Of the three individuals you quoted, by the way, I've found that Novak often has a solid inside track with this adminstration.
6 - RJ
Bush won't pull out of Iraq prematurely. He can't. His entire Presidency is now based upon success there. His supporters (myself included) will go ballistic if he leaves Iraq in 2005 and chaos ensues.
Kerry, OTOH, is not wedded to Iraq. If he is elected, and a couple of really bad weeks go by, he might just cut-and-run. He is obviously indecisive about the whole situation. And if he pulls out and the terrorists overthrow the Iraqi government, he'll just blame Bush for the whole mess.
If you want the troops out now, vote for Kerry, and you might get your wish. If you want to see the job there completed, vote Bush, because he can't leave Iraq short of victory. It's really that simple.
7 - Vic
I think it's sad that people can blame the beheading of civilians on Bush instead of the guys holding the knives.
And who is doing the killing of these civilians? Al Qaeda. You know, the same guys that killed 3,000+ Americans before we invaded Iraq.
Vic
8 - Eric Olsen
a rather salient point sometimes forgotten, thanks Vic; and I hope you are right RJ
9 - Hal Pawluk
That's simply a right-wing characterization of Kerry, RJ, and bears no resemblance to truth.
10 - RJ
I'm not really all that right-wing, Hal. I just hate Kerry.
And, if my comment "bears no resemblance to truth" then please let me know where I am lying about Kerry, so that I may stand corrected by one of my betters.
11 - Eric Olsen
I would say it is a reasonable, neutral observation to conclude Kerry is less committed to Iraq than Bush - I'm not wht's "right wing" about that
12 - Eric Olsen
and does anyone really think invoking the word "Vietnam" in some sort of shamanistic manner actually carries any meaning? All wars have similarities and differences between them, as do butterflies and brands of toilet paper:
"Monarch!!"
"Charmin!!"
discussion closed.
Intensity of feeling has nothing to do with logic.
13 - MCH
"Honor the Fallen"
www.militarycity.com/valor/honor_alpha_b.html
"Army PFC Charles E. Bush, Jr., 43, of Buffalo, NY, assigned to 402nd Civil Affairs Brigade, 352nd Civil Affairs Command, Army Reserve, based in Riverdale Park, MD; Was killed while riding in a convoy Dec. 19 when his vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device Balad, Iraq."
Bush was a cook and had been expected home for the holidays, but instead he volunteered for dangerous guard duty as a door gunner. "He put his life on the line when he could have been safe working as a cook," said his father, Charles E. Bush, Sr. "He's my firstborn, my oldest, and I'm proud of him."
PFC Bush, who joined the Reserves "fairly late in life," is survived by one child.
"Some gave all...all gave some."
- MCH, Vietnam era vet
14 - Shark
Ah, the wonders of modern technology.
Now we can look back at the above essay, compare Then and Now -- and shake our heads -- if we can pull them out of the ostrich hole.
Eric: "...does anyone really think invoking the word "Vietnam" in some sort of shamanistic manner actually carries any meaning?"
Welll...
~ I read the news today, oh boy...
(22 dead in Mosul, killed by a 'worker' from the 'inside'? Kinda like Vietnam, where by day, the Cong worked for the Americans in various positions -- and by night, killed them in their beds.)
And I might add: so far -- (12/23/04) -- Steve Chapman (above) sounds spot on:
"The real debate about our mission in Iraq is no longer between those who say it's succeeding and those who think it's failing, but between those who think it's failing and those who think the word "failure" grossly understates the scope of the catastrophe."
Iraq: portrayed as a butterfly, smells like toilet paper.
Just like Nam.
===============
By the way; just fer fun, compare Shark's assessment written 5 months BEFORE the above opptimistic entry/big wet kiss thrown at Bush and his hawkish handlers.