Iraq You Like a Hurricane

Getting around to writing this post has felt like homework to me. I just keep putting it off, and I know a lot of you aren't that interested in this, but there is a lot of good information to be had. Part of the difficulty in putting this post together is that the information that I have is voluminous, so rest assured that there will be plenty of links and reading that you can do should you so desire.

This mostly stems from a little blog comment conversation that I was having with a guy over on Taylor's blog. He's a hard left liberal, and the kind that resorts to the argument that Bush lied, the war is a lost cause, and we need to withdraw immediately. I wanted to do an exchange of information with him, but he never bothered to respond when I offered. I ended up gathering a lot of stuff and so I'm going to go ahead and leave it all here, and hopefully I can leave it at least somewhat organized. I've sacrificed a lot of quality of writing just for the sake of getting the content out. There is still a lot of underdeveloped thought in here, and hopefully that can be excused. Hopefully the excerpts and links that I've included will speak for themselves.

The war against terrorism began for us in about 2002. It wasn't just the President who authorized the war, he needed the approval of congress. Not only that, but at the time it was supported by our intelligence information and by about 90% of the American public. That's no lie. The notion that this is something that Bush waged in behalf of his father, or that this is some corporate scheme to hand over contracts to rebuild Iraq is just not true. Given what we knew at the time, it was the move that everyone supported. Some people contend that Iraq was better off prior to the invasion. That is patently false.

Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant. One of the crimes he was tried for was the genocidal Al-Anfal Campaign, where hundreds of thousands of people were murdered his regime. He set up concentration camps and used chemical weapons on his own people. A less circulated story, but tragic nonetheless concerns the marsh Arabs. This tribe of people lived on the marshlands that were among the largest wetland ecosystems in Asia. Not it's virtually gone because after an uprising by the marsh Arabs following the first gulf war, Saddam diverted the rivers the vitalized the marshlands and decimated the area, left thousands dead and homeless. For more atrocities committed by his regime, visit this site. Some people even go so far as to say that this war has only served to plunge the country into a civil war.

This post refutes that idea in a comparison between the Iraq conflict and the Spanish Civil War. Comparing the Iraq war to other civil wars, based purely on casualties, the number of deaths in Iraq is just over 1/10 of the number of deaths suffered in the US Civil War, and not even approaching 1/20 of what occurred in the Russian Civil War. There is just no merit to that claim. A terrible conflict yes, a civil war, not close.

For a true sense of what is going on in Iraq here are some sites:

• Michael Totten is a journalist entrenched with soldiers in Iraq. He is not paid by any agency or news station. He gets paid by donations only. This is his blog. It's a raw look from the ground level at what's occurring in Iraq. His most recent entry talks about Fallujah. You may recognize that name back from 2004. It was the city that saw the most violence at any point during the war. I'll post an excerpt from that post at the end of this one.


• This is a NY Times piece that Totten wrote back in December. From the article:
  

  There's a gigantic perception lag in America these days. The Iraq of the popular imagination and the Iraq of the real world are not the same country. It wouldn't be quite right to say Fallujah is safe. You do not want to come here on holiday. But I'm a lot safer here as an American than any terrorist or insurgent would be...Everywhere I go in Fallujah, I am mobbed by smiling children who want me to take their picture. It wasn't always this way.
  
  "I didn't see a single kid out here in 2005," one Marine told me."If a kid popped out of the house, his parents yanked him right back inside."
  
  Women walk the streets by themselves now, as well, which I'm also told was unheard of not long ago. I'm embedded with the Marines. They keep me safe. If I spent too long in the city alone and without armed protection, terrorists might eventually find me. But any insurgent who shows up and announces himself in public won't be rolled up "eventually." He'll be arrested by the Iraqi police within minutes. Even the Marines are softer on terrorists here than the local cops are.

• And Arthur Chrenkoff has written more extensive on the good news coming from Iraq than anyone. The work he did on this blog is a little bit dated now, but came on his own dime. After receiving a job he couldn't pass up, he move on from the continual good news updates, but if you visit his blog, he has 30+ lengthy entries about everything good coming out of Iraq. It's a lot more than you would think.


• This article talks about the panic among Al Qaeda leaders. The following quote from an Al Qaeda leader was intercepted in a letter found by coalition forces:
  

  “We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers,” he says. “Those people were nothing but hypocrites, liars and traitors and were waiting for the right moment to switch sides with whoever pays them most.”

• This post on Powerline covers the shift in public opinion among Muslims regarding Al Qaeda. An excerpt:

  Public opinion polls seem to confirm al Qaeda's suddenly low standing in the Muslim world. Wehner points to a survey in Pakistan finding that in January less than a quarter of Pakistanis approved of bin Laden, compared with 46 percent last August, while backing for al-Qaeda fell from 33 per cent to 18 per cent. And Pew reports that the percentage of Muslims saying suicide bombing is justified in the defense of Islam has declined in seven of the eight Arab countries where trend data are available. In Lebanon, for example, 34 percent of Muslims say such suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified. In 2002, before the Iraq war began, 74 per cent expressed this view.

• In this NY Times article, Iraqi youth begin to voice their disillusionment with religious extremism. From the article:

  In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.
  
  “I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”

• And this last piece from Commentary covers more of the same.

The work our soldiers are doing over in Iraq is making a difference. Maybe you don't agree with the pretenses under which we went to war, but it's important to make that effort worthwhile. Not only that, but a secure and stable Iraq is essential to promoting security here in our land as well. We need a President who values finishing the job, and who will not disregard the immense progress that has been made so far.