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Defeaticrats at home and in Iraq (Steyn)
Hands up, everyone who thinks Iraqâs a quagmire. Not the Iraqi people: According to the latest polls, 70 percent think âlife is good,â and 69 percent are optimistic that things will get even better in the year ahead. For purposes of comparison, they took a similar poll in Europe a while back: In France, 29 percent said they were optimistic about the future; in Germany, 15 percent. Sixty-three percent of Iraqis say they feel âvery safeâ in their own neighborhoods, which is more than the residents of Clichy-sous-Bois can say. Well, OK, those cheerful Iraqis are probably Shiites and Kurds and whatnot. How about the Sunnis? For a small minority group that held a disproportionate and repressive grip on power for decades, theyâve been getting a more solicitous press from Western âliberalsâ than the white Rhodesians or South Africaâs National party ever got. But it turns out, after their strategically disastrous decision to stay home in last Januaryâs vote, the Sunnis are participating in Iraqâs democratic process ... . Oh, OK, so the Shiites and Kurds and Sunnis are feeling chipper, but in the broader Middle East the disastrous neocon invasion has inflamed moderate Arab opinion against America. Well, itâs true the explosive Arab street finally exploded the other day â with 200,000 Jordanians protesting in Amman, waving angry banners and yelling, âBurn in hell, Rumsfeld,â and, âYou are a coward, Bush.â Whoops, my mistake: They were yelling, âBurn in hell, Zarqawi,â and, âYou are a coward, Zarqawi.â If you want to hear someone yelling, âYou are a coward, Bush,â youâve got to go to Cindy Sheehanâs stakeout. And, in fairness to the network news divisions, it may be because so many of their camera crews have taken up permanent residence at the otherwise underpopulated Camp Cindy that they were unable to cover what was the largest demonstration against terrorism ever seen on the streets of the Middle East. Oh, well. So the Shiites and Kurds and Sunni Iraqis and the Arab street are all on board, but come on, what about the insurgents? Everybody knows theyâre winning ... but, er, apparently they donât. The Baathist diehard insurgents have split from the foreign al-Qaida insurgents. While the latter denounced the Iraqi election as âa Satanic project,â the Saddamite remnants urged Sunnis to participate and said theyâd protect polling stations from attacks by the foreign terrorists so that citizens could vote for their approved candidates (the leftover bits of Uday and Qusay, now running on the Psychotic Dictatorship Nostalgia Party ticket). This division between the foreign nutcakes and the domestic nutcakes is the biggest strategic split over the insurgency since Joe Lieberman respectfully distanced himself from Nancy Pelosi. On the other hand, this does belatedly prove the anti-war crowdâs long-held view that Saddamâs secular Baathists and Osamaâs theocrat terrorists would never collaborate, even if it took until last month for the participants themselves to get wise to it. And, alas, unlike the Dems with Hillary, in the Sunni Triangle thereâs no Sunni triangulator to craft a more nuanced position to hold both the Lieberbaathist and Pelosama wings together. So the Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis, the Arab street, and the Baath party have figured Iraqi democracyâs winning. That leaves al-Qaida. Well, not exactly: Ayman Zawahiri, the No. 2 honcho in al-Qaida while theyâre maintaining the polite fiction that bin Ladenâs still functioning, recently rapped terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ... called on him to cut out killings that âthe masses do not understand or approve.â ... So the Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis, the Arab street, the Baath party and bin Ladenâs deputy think the insurgencyâs a bust. Hands up, who thinks itâs winning? ... It was famously said that the Vietnam War was lost on television. In this instance, the Iraq Warâs being lost only on television. In Iraq, itâs a tremendous victory. Indeed, it has the potential to be one of the most consequential, transformative victories of the modern age; but even if it doesnât ever fulfill that potential, itâs still a huge success. Posted by: Bobby 2005-12-16 |
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