Iraq's Important Day
The Panic Over Iraq (Norman Podhoretz, Commentary)
In Iraq today, however, and in the Middle East as a whole, a successful outcome is staring us in the face. Clearly, then, the panic over Iraq—which expresses itself in increasingly frenzied calls for the withdrawal of our forces—cannot have been caused by the prospect of defeat. On the contrary, my twofold guess is that the real fear behind it is not that we are losing but that we are winning, and that what has catalyzed this fear into a genuine panic is the realization that the chances of pulling off the proverbial feat of snatching an American defeat from the jaws of victory are rapidly running out.
Of course, to anyone who relies entirely or largely on the mainstream media for information, it will come as a great surprise to hear that we are winning in Iraq. Winning? Militarily? How can we be winning militarily when, day after day, the only thing of any importance going on in that country is suicide bombings and car bombings? When neither our own troops nor the Iraqi forces we have been training are able to stop the “insurgents” from scoring higher and higher body counts? When every serious military move we make against the strongholds of these dedicated and ruthless adversaries is met with “fierce resistance”? When, for every one of them we manage to kill, two more seem to pop up?
Winning? Politically? How can we be winning politically when the very purpose for which we allegedly invaded Iraq has been unmasked as a chimera? When every step we force the Iraqis to take toward democratization is accompanied by angry sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunnis and between each of them and the Kurds? When our clumsy efforts to bring the Sunnis into the political process have hardly made a dent in their support for the insurgency? When the end result is less likely to be the stable democratic regime we supposedly went there to establish than a civil war followed by the breakup of Iraq into three separate countries?
There has been one great exception to this relentless drumbeat of bad news: it occurred in January 2005, in the coverage of the first election in liberated Iraq. To the astonishment of practically everyone in the world, more than 8 million Iraqis came out to vote on election day even though the Islamofascist terrorists had threatened to slaughter them if they did. This very astonishment was a measure of how false an impression had been created of the state of affairs in Iraq. No one fed by the mainstream media could have had the slightest inkling that these 8 million people were actually there, so invisible had they been to reporters who spent all their time interviewing the discontented Iraqi Man in the Street and to cameras seemingly incapable of focusing on anything but carnage and rubble.
But the mainstream media soon recovered from the shock. By October, on the morning after a second ballot in which the new Iraqi constitution was ratified by fully 79 percent of the electorate, the Washington Post ran its announcement of these inspiring results on page 13.
Today is one of those landmarks in Iraq that will be difficult to bury on Page 13.
Whatever criticism one sees fit to muster about our efforts in Iraq, the overthrow of a tyrant and replacement with some semblance of popular sovereignty is no small gift from one people to another.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/15/05 08:22 | International | Technorati
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The courage of the Iraqi people in turning out to vote in such huge numbers in the face of the threat of violence and retribution is indeed the most underreported and underappreciated aspect of this entire war. It should shame every American who won't go to the polls if, as Jon Stewart put it the other night, it's cloudy outside.
That being said, I think Podhoretz is being optimistic to the point of delusional to say that we're winning in Iraq.
Posted by another precinct chair @ 08:38 on 12/16/05
All they keep doing is hitting every milestone that is set on the way to democracy, and all we keep hearing is we're losing.
I wish popular sovereignty were losing like that in more of the world's repressive regimes! Even though it might force me into a different line of work. :)
Posted by Kevin @ 10:19 on 12/16/05
Winning and losing are nebulous concepts in Iraq, it seems to me. Are they on the road to self-determination and popular sovereignty? Absolutely, and God bless them and more power to them. Will that manifest itself in the type of western-style democracy we'd like to see in the Middle East? I dunno. That remains to be seen.
What we're definitely losing is the battle for "hearts and minds." The violence is in fact getting worse, and more and more of the Iraqi population despises us, sees us as an occupying force, and wants us to leave. In the long run, I can't see this doing anything to make this country any safer; in fact, I see it doing the exact opposite. I'm truly glad that Iraq is on its way to self rule, but I fear it's at the expense of our own safety and security.
Posted by another precinct chair @ 12:45 on 12/16/05
The country was a very safe place under Saddam Hussein. Tyrants do stability pretty well.
Maybe a democratic Iraq will be a threat to the US. Maybe it won't. Saddam Hussein's Iraq certainly no longer is, however.
As the drawdown begins in earnest, the "occupying force" complaints will have less salience than they do now (and they mostly sound like sour grapes from the people who opposed the war at this point -- as I've said frequently, the US isn't an occupying power, and does occupation terribly, much to our credit!). It would have been nice if the drawdown had begun earlier -- if we've learned anything, it's that the milestones could have been much more aggressive in their timing -- but one certainly understands being conservative in setting these milestones. Missing one could have had devastating consequences.
Posted by Kevin @ 13:00 on 12/16/05
As usual, we agree on several things, but have a couple of fundamental disagreements.
We've historically not been any good as an occupying force, and that is much to our credit, as you say. However, when roughly three-quarters of the population of a country wants us out, we have regrettably become an occupying power. I think the occupying force complaints are very much to the point, however; our presence there has served to radicalize a portion of the population that likely wouldn't have been rabidly anti-American. This will lessen as the drawdown begins, it's true, but the damage has been done. A democratic Iraq probably won't be a threat to the US, but then again, Saddam Hussein's Iraq wasn't much of a threat, either.
Posted by another precinct chair @ 16:32 on 12/16/05
I think it's a mistake to conflate the notion that Iraqis think it's time for American troops to leave with the notion that Iraqis hate Americans for deposing Saddam Hussein. That may be an accurate reading of the Sunni Iraqi street or even the American fringe-antiwar-left street, but I think it's a misreading of the Shiite/Kurd majorities in Iraq.
However, it is thankfully time for drawdowns to begin, largely because Iraqis themselves have achieved Democratic milestones that too many "realists" on the left and right insisted simply weren't possible. Kudos to the Iraqis for proving them wrong.
Posted by Kevin @ 22:48 on 12/16/05
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