Thursday, November 27, 2008

What can we be thankful for in Iraq?

In a survey of "random politically-incorrect reasons to be optimistic on Thanksgiving day," Victor Davis Hanson asks "What happened in Iraq?":

Lost? Quagmire? Out by March 2008 which was the promise Obama gave when he announced his run in February 2007? General Betray Us? Somehow between Gen. Petraeus’s 2007 congressional testimony (Cf. Hillary’s “suspension of disbelief” slur) and the present calm, the US military essentially won the war. All the front-page stories in our papers that Americans in Iraq were incompetent, barbaric, mercenary, and Hitlerian suddenly ceased, and in their absence there was—nothing? About five times as many Chicagoans died violently in October than did US soldiers in combat in Iraq. Just as the hysteria peaked as gas was supposedly fated to hit $5 a gallon, but silence followed when it descended below $2, and just as we were warned that spiraling home prices had ensured an entire new generation of Americans were shut out of the American dream, and then even greater furor followed when prices fell suddenly and Americans were robbed of their equity, so too with Iraq, which we were to assume, would always be lost, but apparently never won. Like it or not, Gen. Petraeus will compare favorably with generals like Sherman, LeMay, and Ridgway who likewise somehow found victory when failure seemed certain. For all the tragedy and mayhem, the thought that Saddam Hussein is gone and just five years later there is a stable and successful constitutional government in the heart of the ancient caliphate seems as surreal as it is encouraging.

On the one hand, it is indeed good news that the month of October 2008 saw the lowest death rate of U.S. troops in Iraq for any month since the war began; that in face the murder rate in Chicago exceeds the death toll of U.S. soldiers in the entire country of Iraq by 141.

On the other hand, factoring in the deaths of civilians in violent incidents in Iraq, it is evident how much more must be accomplished.

Still, all things considered, civilian casualties in Iraq have greatly diminished from the high point in August 2007, in large part as a consequence of the "Troop Surge". And the Iraqi government appears to be confident in maintaining security to the extent that it has approved a landmark agreement that will see all US troops withdraw by the end of 2011.

What follows is a brief November roundup of additional Iraq-related news we can be thankful for:

Regular updates can be found at the website for Multi-National Force Iraq - Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Bridging the divide between Sunni & Shia

Sunnis and Shi'ites made an emotional reach across the sectarian divide on Tuesday, reopening a Baghdad bridge between the two neighborhoods of Adhamiya and Kadhimiya -- closed since a 2005 (Reuters):

[O]n Tuesday Sunni children from Adhamiya raced to see their Shi'ite friends in Kadhimiya. Women from the two communities met up on the bridge, kissing and hugging each other with joy.

"When the faces met, the lips smiled, hands shook, bodies hugged, the tears flowed out of joy. This is the Iraqi citizen," said Sheikh Ahmed al-Samaraie, head of Iraq's Sunni Endowment, which runs Sunni religious offices and mosques in Iraq. ...

"This day is a remarkable day, a day of a great Iraq. The day of meeting, love, brotherhood, affinity ... The day we proved to the whole world that we are one nation," Sayyid Salih al-Haidari, Samaraie's Shi'ite counterpart said in a speech. Delegations accompanying the two officials then went to pray together at a nearby mosque.