Der Spiegel reports from Ramadi and elsewhere in Iraq:
Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq — it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq — not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers — are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn’t hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious “Sunni Triangle,” is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.
The paper’s Ullrich Fichtner spent three weeks traveling through Ramadi, Baghdad, as well as several other places. His report is extensive and not all “pie in the sky”, but is grounded in direct observations and interviews with Americans and Iraqis. It is a must-read today. In the end, it is tough to disagree with Fichtner’s definitive statement:
The US military is more successful in Iraq than the world wants to believe.
More thoughts and very good blog reaction after the jump.
The story here is very simple. If we continue to give our soldiers and the Iraqi people the opportunity to succeed, their successes will continue.
The anti-war folks have changed their stories of late from “we can’t win militarily” to “we can’t win politically” in the face of the facts that we are winning militarily. Now, we’re seeing their newest mantra just as faulty. What they fail to remember is this: democratic societies are built from the bottom up, not the top down. As our soldiers bring stability and trust to Iraqi communities, neighborhoods, and cities they will improve their political situation. Democracy requires the sort of rational discourse to bring about that simply can’t happen in the presence of Iranian-backed death squads and Islamist terror. But when those killers are beaten back, it springs up with surprising vigor. That is what has happened in the north and south and now is beginning in Ramadi and Baqubah and Baghdad. We have no good reason to believe it won’t continue elsewhere, no matter what Harry Reid says from his Capitol Hill office. We can not abandon them.
(via Medienkritik)
UPDATE: Jules Crittenden asks, and perhaps answers, one heck of a question.
So now we see that a former grunt and a German are capable of doing a better job in Iraq than our own professional press, managing to talk to real people and unafraid to talk about the good as well as the bad, the progress that is being made, the utter necessity of blood, sweat and tears that is being expended. Again, why are the great American media organizations unable to manage this? They’ll be handing out Pulitzers for 2007, the year when the leading forces of American journalism failed an entire people, sought to condemn an entire region of the world, and were willing to see slaughter and chaos. I can’t wait to see what the august judges settle on as the exemplars of this year’s greatness. They don’t have a Pulitzer for shame. They don’t have one for sloth and cynicism. But then, they don’t really have Pulitzers for passion, moral purpose and people who buck genteel drawing room sensibilities, either.
Jeff Goldstein points out that our treacherous realpolitik in the 80s and 90s have put us in this situation and that George Bush’s “audacity of hope” coupled with the tenacity to face down evil even though doing so is very difficult, is starting to bear real fruit.
If it’s true, as Ed notes, that Iraqis at one time viewed us with distrust, much of that had to do with our “realist” position in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Coupled with this was our early belief that the Iraqis themselves would take charge of their own security and route the terrorists and those dead enders who stood in the way of an Iraqi democracy. But it turns out that the Iraqis were waiting to make sure of our commitment, and now — convinced that their “imperialist occupiers” have their interests at heart — they are beginning not only to greet us as liberators, but are working along side us to ensure that the liberation takes.
