Category: History

Unbelievable

It almost seems like the Iraqis are getting the hang of this “representative democracy” thing — negotiation and compromise instead of bullets and firebombs:

It’s become clear from the active shuttle-like movement of the rival parties and mediators that the intensity of the political crisis began to subside compared to how things looked like a week ago.
In spite of the violence that disturbed Baghdad this morning, the rival parties resumed their meetings and talks with some politicians playing the role of mediators; the most prominent of whom is President Talabani and even in the two main competing camps we’re hearing moderate voices emerge to propose solutions like the Virtue Party from the UIA and al-Mutlaq from Maram.

Monday Politics

Last week’s historic elections in Iraq passed without so much as a blip in the MSM. And when President Bush goes on the air to repeat the exact same things he’s been saying since his 2003 State of the Union address, he’s reviled for changing his story and grudgingly admitting mistakes. It’s like people ascribe to him the exact opposite of anything he says. He said in 2003 that Iraq would be a long, hard road, but when he says it again today, he’s villified for only now admitting that everything wouldn’t be cupcakes and roses.

Let’s see: 2/3 of Iraq is stable, peaceful and prosperous. The US has built and rebuilt thousands of schools, hospitals, power and water plants and other infrastructure that fell to ruin while Saddam was lining his and the UN’s pockets with the Oil-for-Food scam. (See the ongoing Good News from the Front series. It’ll make you cry.)

Over 70% of Iraqis came out to vote last week, in defiance of the nihilistic barbarian “insurgency”. (Admittedly this turnout is down from the 99.9% during Saddam’s day)

Anyway, Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that hysteria is actually a usual feature of the US at war. People called Abraham Lincoln a bumbling ape who could never hope to win a war (sound familiar?):

During the hysterics over the Korean War, George Marshall — who earlier oversaw the U.S. military victory of World War II and aid to a postwar starving Europe — was called a “front man for traitors” and “a living lie” by Indiana Sen. William Jenner.

In this context, Howard Dean’s assertion that the present war is unwinnable or John Kerry’s claim that our troops are engaging in terrorizing Iraqis is hardly novel.

Second, there is also no necessary connection between occasionally terrible news and the final outcome of the war. The near-fatal losses of the Army of the Potomac in 1864, the advances of the Kaiser’s armies in the 1918 German offensive or the carnage on Okinawa in May and June 1945 nevertheless all presaged our own victory not much later.

Third, American history is far kinder to those who persevered than those who alleged that their country’s victory was impossible. Most today revere Lincoln and Marshall, along with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, who weathered unimaginable slurs. A Gen. McClellan or Sen. Jenner — who opportunistically piled on when news from the front was bad — was mostly forgotten when things inevitably improved.

The same will probably be true of Iraq. The election this week will prove the most successful yet. The Iraqi army gets bigger — and better. The Pentagon now does not fret over the need for more American troops, but agrees that evolving events on the ground will allow measured withdrawal.

Attacks by insurgents have been growing less frequent since October, according to Major General Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force — Iraq. Democracy, not al Qaeda, is the new buzz on the Arab Street. Seventy-one percent of the Iraqis in a recent ABC/Time magazine poll “say that their own lives are going well” now. The fatwas of Ayman Al-Zawahiri sound ever more desperate and shrill.

Here’s a note I left on a blog this morning, whose author asked: why is Bush only now admitting that the reason for going to war was based on faulty intelligence, and why is the US allowed to have nuclear weapons and North Korea not:

About the war in Iraq: There was a general consensus before the invasion that Saddam _did_ have weapons of mass destruction, because he had used them in the past against Iran and against his own population. Even the UN merely said that they couldn’t _find_ them, not that there were never any. The British, French and Russian intelligence agencies were all convinced that Saddam indeed had biological and chemical weapons.

Second, the WMD thing was only one of several reasons to invade. If you read the congressional declaration of war on Iraq (http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/bliraqreshouse.htm) and Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html), you’ll see a long list of reasons, including past aggression, non-compliance with 17 UN resolutions, including the one that ended the 1991 war, and also humanitarian reasons — to end the suffering of the Iraqi people.

Human Rights Watch estimated that Saddam Hussein killed around 30,000 people a year during his time in power. In the spring of 2004 Iraq Body Count estimated at most 20,000 people reported killed by the war and subsequent occupation. So the Americans _saved_ at least 10,000 people in their first year in Iraq.

As for why America, Britain, France and Israel should have nuclear weapons but North Korea and Iran should not? All of the former nations are representative democracies with checks and balances on their governments. George Bush couldn’t just go and invade other countries all by himself — the US congress voted overwhelmingly to invade Iraq (something that Democrat politicians have conveniently forgotten these days).

But North Korea is ruled by a madman who has starved half of his population to death in the last decade, and Iran’s president, in addition to denying the Holocaust, has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.

A Just War

Victor Davis Hanson is up to his usual form today:

Of course, the White House, as is true in all wars, has made mistakes, but only one critical lapse — and it is not the Herculean effort to establish a consensual government at the nexus of the Middle East in less than three years after removing Saddam Hussein. The administration’s lapse, rather, has come in its failure to present the entire war effort in its proper moral context.

We took no oil — the price in fact skyrocketed after we invaded Iraq. We did not do Israel’s bidding; in fact, it left Gaza after we went into Iraq and elections followed on the West Bank. We did not want perpetual hegemony — in fact, we got out of Saudi Arabia, used the minimum amount of troops possible, and will leave Iraq anytime its consensual government so decrees. And we did not expropriate Arab resources, but, in fact, poured billions of dollars into Iraq to jumpstart its new consensual government in the greatest foreign aid infusion of the age.

In short, every day the American people should have been reminded of, and congratulated on, their country’s singular idealism, its tireless effort to reject the cynical realism of the past, and its near lone effort to make terrible sacrifices to offer the dispossessed Shia and Kurds something better than the exploitation and near genocide of the past — and how all that alone will enhance the long-term security of the United States.

That goal was what the U.S. military ended up so brilliantly fighting for — and what the American public rarely heard. The moral onus should have always been on the critics of the war. They should have been forced to explain why it was wrong to remove a fascist mass murderer, why it was wrong to stay rather than letting the country sink into Lebanon-like chaos, and why it was wrong not to abandon brave women, Kurds, and Shia who only wished for the chance of freedom.