Amir Taheri expands on an article that first appeared in the WSJ, on the messy birth that is occurring in Iraq. It is an excellent accounting of the successes that you are not hearing about — large numbers of people immigrating back into the country, and a growing free press.
More importantly, it includes a clear description of exactly why our current press is so gullible.
The enemies of the new Iraq have succeeded in ruining the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis, but over the past three years they have advanced their overarching goals, such as they are, very little. Instead, they have been militarily contained and politically defeated again and again, and the beneficiary has been Iraqi democracy. [...]
The Baathists and jihadists, their prior efforts to derail Iraqi democracy having come to naught, have now pinned their hopes on creating enough chaos and death to persuade Washington of the futility of its endeavors.
Terrorism is a media war. Terrorist acts in Iraq, and in most places, are militarily insignificant. They don’t succeed in capturing land or governments, and they don’t degrade their enemy’s fighting capacity.
Rather, suicide bombs are political weapons. In the case of Iraq, the target is the American citizen, and more specifically, the American left. The only way that we lose in Iraq is to lose the will to fight. When a war criminal blows up a market, the goal is outrage and despair. And, too often, the Western left (lead by the mainstream press) gives them exactly what they want.
If you’d like to understand the stakes, read Taheri’s piece all the way through, it’s worth it.
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