RSS 2.0
Can You Spell R-E-C-O-N-C-I-L-I-A-T-I-O-N?
Now that the Dems can no longer deny the success of the surge, let’s see if they can deny the fact that reconciliation is occurring in Iraq.
Meanwhile In Iraq
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY
Thursday, September 25, 2008 4:20 AM PTDemocracy: Lawmakers in Iraq reached a crucial milestone this week by approving provincial elections. This is more evidence for the “reconciliation” that Barack Obama claims not to see.
Good news is no news these days, especially when it comes from Iraq. So you might have missed the story about the political breakthrough in the Iraqi parliament, which approved legislation to hold a new round of provincial elections early next year.
The bill — which awaits approval by a three-person presidential council — is important because it sets up the first provincial vote in four years and because the voting promises to be more inclusive than before.
Sunni Iraqis largely boycotted the earlier provincial elections out of mistrust toward the Shiite-dominated national government. The vote did nothing to stop the insurgency and may actually have made it worse.
Now most of the Sunnis have turned against violence, cast their lot with the democratic process and are ready to take a larger role in the national life. “The coming elections will change the Iraqi political map,” said one Sunni lawmaker.
This is the key point: They will change the map peacefully — not through car bombs, but through the ballot box.
Dare we say that democracy is advancing in Iraq? And isn’t this a shining example of the “reconciliation” that Barack Obama, among others, still claims to be waiting for?
Obama admitted earlier this month that President Bush’s troop surge had succeeded “beyond our wildest dreams” in reducing violence. But he insisted that it had yet to produce the desired political dividends.
This week’s vote is dramatic evidence that reconciliation is well under way. And it’s not happening just in parliament. It’s also out on the street. Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter who recently returned to Iraq after two years, bears witness to that fact.
“At first, I didn’t recognize the place,” he wrote. “When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope.”
It’s hard to argue against this eyewitness reporting, especially from a paper that has harshly criticized the Bush administration every step of the way. If only out of honesty and fairness, the president’s critics should acknowledge the success of his courageous decision to step up the fight in Iraq, against the advice of most of his generals.
With the U.S. economy on life support, it may be inevitable that Bush gets little credit these days for this long-awaited success in Iraq. He’ll probably have to wait for the historians to give him his due . . . .