The Good News From Iraq

Senator Kerry assures us that President Bush has either no plan or a lousy plan for post-war Iraq and that he, if he were president, would handle things differently. He never tells us what he would do, exactly, but if he were as smart as he wants us to believe he is, he would do in Iraq precisely what the United States is doing right now. The media focusses on the car bombs and the killings, but these are a relatively small, though certainly tragic, part of the picture of what is happening in Iraq. In fact, when one reads an account like Chrenkoff's 7th installment of Good News from Iraq one feels a deep sense of pride in our soldiers, our leaders, and our people for what they're accomplishing in this troubled land.

I don't understand how anyone can read Chrenkoff's reports and not feel that we have undertaken something profoundly good. I don't know how anyone can think that the Iraqi people are not better off today than they were two years ago. Bush's critics have to deliberately ignore the evidence in order to deprecate the progress that has been made in Iraq. What we've done and are doing in that land is an historic achievement and one that makes all of the carping we hear from Kerry and the Democrats seem so small and whiny.

Perhaps among the most telling anecdotes in Chrenkoff's report is this:

"Two months ago, independent Iraqi pollster Sadoun Dulame asked 3,075 Iraqis from all over the country which US candidate they preferred. Most Iraqis scorned the question, but about 15 percent responded passionately - almost all Bush backers.

"When we asked this 15 percent why they cared, they said, 'Because the American election will affect conditions in Iraq,' ' says Mr. Dulame, director of the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies. 'They prefer that Bush stay. Because if Bush leaves, maybe the Democrats will adopt a new policy, and not pay so much attention to Iraq.'

"In a perfect reversal of US demographics, the Bush lovers tended to be more educated and clustered in cosmopolitan areas. Call them Red Iraqis. 'Most of them were intellectuals,' says Dulame. 'US intellectuals, maybe most of them adopt Democratic values. But in Iraq, that's the reality'."