Soccer Dad

If you have to say something nice ...

Well if it's something nice about President Bush then the Washington Post emphasizes it toward the end the article. The War in Iraq has largely been successful. So how does the Post frame the article? The President got the costs wrong.

But the administration badly underestimated the financial cost of the occupation and seriously overstated the ease of pacifying Iraq and the warmth of the reception Iraqis would give the U.S. invaders. And while peace and democracy may yet spread through the region, some early signs are that the U.S. action has had the opposite effect.

Not everyone is hedging so. Amir Taheri thinks things are going quite swimmingly.

Liberation has also given a new life to an estimated 1.2 million Marsh Arabs, whose villages Saddam wiped out in the 1980s and 1990s. Saddam built a canal to drain the marshes, which were recognized as one of the wonders of nature, so that his tanks could reach the villages unhindered. That criminal scheme is now being scrapped, allowing the marshes to regain at least part of their pristine beauty. Tens of thousands of marshlanders have returned to rebuild their homes, thus helping repair one of the worst environmental disasters of the last century.

It is not surprising that one key word in Iraq today is awadah (return).

Its magic is also felt by hundreds of thousands of Kurds whose villages were razed by Saddam in the murderous campaign known as Al-Anfal. It is unlikely that all the 4,000 destroyed villages will be rebuilt anytime soon. But work on hundreds of them is under way.

It is also "return" time for many aspects of Iraqi life.

I think it's interesting that a year after Milosevic was chased from Kosovo there were no snide "analyses" on the front page of the Post. There was an op-ed, though, by Sandy Berger who asserted confidently (June 10, 2000):

A year ago, Western democracies stood against a rampage of ethnic cleansing that threatened the peace of Europe and the shared values of our transatlantic community. One year later, progress on the ground is significant, but incomplete. Continued progress will enable us to reduce our presence. But we must stay the course. What is at stake is whether, together with the Europeans, we can do over time for Kosovo and Southeast Europe what we did for Western Europe after World War II and Central Europe after the collapse of communism: integrate them into a democratic, undivided Europe where the prospect of yet another European war is unthinkable.

Well things are disintegrating again. It was a super idea to put the UN in charge.

Posted by SoccerDad at March 19, 2004 2:17 PM