Monday, March 13, 2006

Good News From Iraq*

*Yup, this is a hat-tip to Aussie Arthur Chrenkoff whose regular column the "Good News from Iraq" ran in the WSJ. Richard Nadler at NRO recounts the testimony and experiences of several recent returnees [Lt. Lawrence Indyk, Marine Corporal Richard Gibson, and Marine Sergeant J. D. Johannes] from Iraq. And it is good news indeed.

Lt. Indyk...contrasted the dinar's stabilization under the Coalition with the savings-wrecking inflations under the Baathist regime [and] the increase in electrical supply, and the doubling of oil revenues in the post-Saddam era.
...
Indyk discussed advances in services as well: the 60 percent decline of infant mortality in post-Saddam Iraq, and the improved access to schooling and medical care...
...
Indyk then proceeded to describe the findings of the most extensive and scientific polls of Iraq opinion, performed by Arabic speakers for Oxford Research International near the beginning of 2004, then at the end of 2005. These polls covered all of Iraq's major regions and demographic groups.

Asked to compare their current lives with their lives under Saddam, Iraqis reported an improvement in availability of necessities, and an improvement in overall economic wellbeing. They reported superior access to clean water, health care, and education. Iraqi respondents believed that their local governments had improved. Asked what form of government they hoped to live under going forward, democracy won handily: four-to-one over the rule of one-man, and ten-to-one over totalitarianism.

Iraqis list security as their most pressing problem. But a plurality of Iraqis feel safer now than under Saddam, and a majority feel safer from ordinary crime. Moreover, better than 60 percent feel personally safe in their neighborhoods.
***
Coalition casualties declined by 27 percent in 2005. They have declined by 62 percent in 2006, measured against the comparable period of 2005.

The insurgent strategy of targeting Iraqi police and army units peaked in July of 2005. Since then, casualties among those units have declined by 33 percent.

Attacks on other soft targets are also down. For instance, there were 146 strikes against the oil infrastructure in 2004, compared to 101 in 2005.

The tipping point, Gibson contends, occurred last March, when the number Iraqi boots on the ground — police and army units — surpassed those of Coalition forces. From that point on, the new Iraqi government has proved increasingly able to hold and garrison areas that have been cleared on insurgents.
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From March of 2005 to September of 2005, the number of civilian tips informing on insurgents increased from 483 to 4,700, as numerous Sunni tribes declared outright war on al Qaeda. "The insurgency in Iraq," said Gibson, "is being dismantled by the equivalent of a Tips hotline."

Gibson cited polling of Iraqi opinion to support his thesis. Fifty-eight percent of Iraqis feel threatened by terrorists, compared with 10 percent who feel threatened by Coalition troops. And by 71 percent to 9 percent, Iraqis believe that their own security forces — Iraqi security forces — are winning the fight against terror.
***
Former Marine Sergeant J. D. Johannes was a soldier during the first Iraq war. He returned to his old unit as combat reporter in the second. He offers this assessment:

Everyone knows that the history of war is written by the victors. But the war in Iraq has shattered that truism. In Iraq, history is being written by the losers. Baathist kidnappers and jihadist bombers are planning their operations not to win the war in Iraq, but to win it in America. To that end, they are assessing what American news organizations are willing to cover, and what American reporters are willing to risk. As an immediate result, many of the feeds on the nightly news are coming from Arabic sources that are either non-professional in their journalistic standards or hostile to American policy aims. As a long-term result, the American public is broadly misinformed on a war that Coalition arms and Iraqi democrats are, in fact, winning.


Sad to say, the bad news campaign is working where not a few conservatives, Bill Buckley and Francis Fukuyama among them, have either abandoned or started to openly question the undertaking.

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