Category: World

Arthur Chrenkoff‘s lates collection of good news from Iraq up.

Anybody notice a theme in these reports? Count the number of times you see the phrase “neglected under Saddam” or variants.

Another excellent essay by Krauthammer:

We are unlike Rome, unlike Britain and France and Spain and the other classical empires of modern times, in that we do not hunger for territory. The use of the word “empire” in the American context is ridiculous. It is absurd to apply the word to a people whose first instinct upon arriving on anyone’s soil is to demand an exit strategy. I can assure you that when the Romans went into Gaul and the British into India, they were not looking for exit strategies. They were looking for entry strategies.

Omar at Iraq the Model relates an extremely boring story about going to a restaurant chock-full of Iraqis enjoying their newfound freedom and prosperity.

You sit in a restaurant like this one and see families relaxing with their children playing and having fun late at night and you feel that there’s ‘something’ wrong in the way MSM is dealing with the Iraqi issue. I watch TV and I see hell breaking around me then I go outside and see enough normalcy AND progress to make me believe that the people in the media are not here to report how’s life going but rather they are here reporting pre-prepared stories and to be faced with something that contradicts the picture they have in their minds would be really annoying and will mean more hard work to try to find the truth or something close to it.

(MSM = “Mainstream Media”; seems to be the new buzzword)

…why the US invasion of Iraq was a bad thing? Better yet, tell Ali:

In another step towards a democratic Iraq; yesterday the national assembly successfully held the elections to form the Iraqi national council in an atmosphere that is entirely new for Iraqis. For the first time we saw free discussions with the absence of fear. No one man talking and the rest just listening and nodding their heads in approval. Many members were so eager to talk and show their opinions, interrupting each other many times and of course this is all natural as a result of being forced to silence for such a long time. This led to a mess many times but it didn’t last for a long time.
Objections and the existence of many different points of view in the same place are things that no one dared to do or even think of before.

Stories like this make me start crying randomly throughout the day, struck by the unaccustomed feeling that there may actually be some good in the world.