Rocket and mortar attacks have fallen to their lowest level in nearly two years. Civilian deaths have dropped sharply since summer. Shoppers are venturing out, even in Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Iraq’s capital is by no means yet safe. But the trend toward better security is indisputable. In short, the traumatized residents of this sprawling city are experiencing their first sense of normalcy after years of bombings, kidnappings and wholesale slaughter. Iraqi officials are speaking optimistically about reopening streets and gradually lifting the nighttime curfew to encourage public confidence.
And over the weekend, in London’s Observer, which is even further to the left than the AP, there was another interesting and hopeful sign of progress:
It begins and ends with the children. They stayed away from the al- Gazaly school in southern Baghdad when the streets were murderous – their parents moved out and their PE teacher was shot dead during the mundane act of having a haircut. Now, one by one, cautiously, determinedly, noisily, they are returning to their desks, bringing the school back from the brink. Their hopeful faces reflect, perhaps, the new and fragile optimism dawning in Iraq. It began as a whisper, but every day the voices grow louder, daring to believe that a country which threatened to tear itself apart is coming together. American deaths are down; Iraqi deaths are reported to be down. Refugees are returning home; shops and businesses are reopening. US generals, whose army was said to be ‘broken’, now give upbeat assessments that they are nearing a ‘tipping point’ – not merely the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end. Could America be about to turn around a disaster?
So, kids are going back to school, violence is down, American casualties are down, and even the most cautious observers are evincing an optimism that would have been unimaginable prior to the implementation of the new Petraeus strategy. Still, opponents of that new strategy continue to insist that “the overall strategy is wrong.” And what’s wrong with it? If the current, “indisputable” trend continues, opponents of this new strategy will have been on the wrong side of history–and I suspect for most of them they’d rather see the United States retreat from Iraq and be proven right, than see a free and peaceful Iraq, which would vindicate an administration they despise so much. But what’s good news for the rest of us is bad news for the Democrats. As Jules Crittenden says, “al-Qongressional Leadership better watch out.”
