WSJ senior editorial page writer Robert Pollock calls the Iraq glass "Half-Full," but someone who lives there, Iraq's interim president Ghazi Yawer, says it is "90% good" and "10% bad."--"we got rid of the most vicious regime."
This short lead editorial I've linked tells the story that Lee Iacocca doesn't get from Reuters, The Guardian or the NY Times. Pollock was there himself, immediately after liberation and again two weeks ago. Despite the stories of strife we've been bombarded with over the last year, Pollock returned home after the latest trip more optimistic than ever.
"Why? Because if the past year couldn't drive Iraq into chaos--and despite what you see on the event-driven nightly news reports, it hasn't come close--probably nothing will."
Pollock also quotes Paul Wolfowitz, from the plane ride home: "I've stopped pretending that I come out to raise their [the troops'] morale because inevitably they raise mine." Apparently the only place morale is low is on the home front, where our buddy Lee Iacocca is forming his opinions about "the direction we're going."
Posted by JohnGalt at June 30, 2004 11:18 AMHeartening news, but it's another sermon to the choir.
For every person reading the WSJ Ed page, there are 10,000 watching Rather, Brokaw and Jennings. And these folks have had "quagmire" inculcated into them. Many war supporters I know have thrown in the towel. I talked to a retired Admiral in the US Navy who said "I hope those guys have an exit strategy."
Sugarchuck mentioned in a personal email last week (discussing the invasion of a Chinese Day Care Center to liberate all the students) that he played a gig with some real "love-it-or-leave-it" guys, all of whom now see quagmire and Vietnam Redux.
The media own this country's heart and mind. If the President cannot go over their heads to the people, ala Reagan, he does not have a chance in November. I, for one, am as worried as I have ever been.
That was basically my point. It's time to switch the debate from "winning the peace" in Iraq to winning the "peace" in the good ol' US of A.
Our intention in Iraq (at least for those of us who do not despise Bush and all that he stands for) was to create a new representative government that valued individual liberty and would not devolve into another totalitarian dictatorship or a theocracy. Yet here in our own land we see forces attempting to devolve America's government into each of these systems.
I am hopelessly optimistic that neither can happen here, at least not completely, but the mechanism that prevents it is full participation in the public forum of ideas. The most important idea for preservation of our free system is the "revolutionary" position of Patrick Henry. That idea flies straight into the face of Hillary Clinton "taking things away from us for the common good" and of George W. Bush prohibiting stem cell research.
As they say in New Hampshire (on their license plates, at least) "Live Free or Die."
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