The old English comedy troupe, Beyond the Fringe, had a routine mocking BBC reporting during World War II that always began with a rich, plummy voice intoning: “And now, with news of fresh disasters …”
As with the wartime BBC, so with modern media. Everyone dwells on the darkest, the saddest and the gloomiest, and it’s not only on local TV that it has to bleed to lead.
For our troops in Iraq, this has been a continual frustration. No matter what happens that’s hopeful, the media only delight in reporting news of fresh and preferably gory disasters. Wasn’t it only a few days into the Iraq war that The New York Times started using “quagmire” in front-page stories?
Yet every now and then on the bleak global-warming-surge-is-failing-al-Qaeda-lousy-health-care-subprime-mortgage-debacle landscape, up pops some bright flower of good news that deserves to be noticed.
This week is one of those times. So, just for a moment, let me ask you to leave off your disaster-wallowing and solemn navel-gazing, and enjoy these brief blooms before they’re trodden underfoot again by the nattering anchormen of negativism.
Good Thing Number One: One young Saudi woman will not be lashed 200 times for the crime of being in the car of an unrelated male when violent intruders attacked and raped them both.
This week King Abdullah pardoned the teenager, noting that she and the man she was with “had suffered a level of torture and distress that was by itself enough to discipline them.”
We may find revolting this concept of “discipline,” and a pardon still implies guilt; furthermore, the barbarous dictates of Wahabbism continue to prevail in Saudi Arabia.
But if we cared that this poor woman was going to be flogged and imprisoned — and many did — surely we ought to rejoice that now she’ll be freed.
Good Thing Number Two: This week, dangerous Shiite troublemaker Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put on white robes and became the first sitting president of Iran tomake the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, along with 2 million other Muslims.
“Yippee for him,” you may say sardonically, but the great thing is that the Saudi king invited him. Keep in mind that Saudis are Sunni, and they regard Shiites such as Ahmadinejad as heretics and apostates.
It is too early to predict some historic accommodation between these mutually combative strands of Islam. But if the easing of Sunni-Shia hostilities, even in this small way, means fewer innocents die in sectarian attacks in the coming months, leaving fewer embittered survivors to retaliate, who but fanatical purists like Osama bin Laden can be against it?
Good Thing Number Three: This week the British formally turned over control of Basra to Iraqi security forces. The situation is messy, with sectarian fighting galore (see above), but perhaps now we can douse for good all the silly accusations of Western neo-colonialism heard in the early days of the Iraq war.
The British — and Poles and Canadians and Americans — are not waging a campaign of imperialist expansion in the Middle East. We’re decent democracies motivated by a mix of national self-interest and sometimes-clumsy altruism.
The British took Basra, ran it during turbulent times and lost 174 troops there. Now they’ve given it back — hardly the act of a hegemon’s henchman.
And, Really Excellent Thing Number Four: Violence in Iraq has subsided dramatically in the last six months, to the lowest level since the first year of the American invasion. And much of the fighting that continues appears to be between Iraqis and hated al Qaeda militants.
Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the second-ranking American officer in Iraq, says the lull in hostilities has finally opened a window for reconciliation among rival sects.
“So that kind of defines 2007 very simply,” Odierno told reporters. “A long hard fight and a lot of sacrifice by a lot of soldiers, Marines and airmen to get there.”
Oh — one other great thing: For more than six years, al Qaeda hasn’t managed to strike us at home, and it’s not for lack of trying. From this, and from other smaller reasons for optimism, we should take heart.
Merry Christmas!
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
