Iraq: A slightly different take

Had a discussion the other night with a friend I hadn't seen in almost a year. He's a reservist and has spent a good deal of time the last five years in Afghanistan and Iraq. I brought up something that's been bothering me for about a year now ... something I hear every day (even from those on the Right) but can't completely wrap my mind around.

"So how bad is it, really, in Iraq?" I asked him.

"Depends on where you are," he replied. "Couple of places are really bad, really bloody. But in most of the country, there hasn't been any sign of war for a long, long time."

Funny how perception is shaped. Every other day or so, you'll see on the evening news or in a headline in Yahoo news or some other Web site that a roadside bomb killed two Marines or a car bomb exploded in a Baghdad market killing 14 people. And that's our news for the day. From an entire country. Imagine if, for four years or so, that the only news out of New York was that's day's murder count, accompanied by Mr. Very Concerned Anchorman or Congressperson telling us that the city is on the verge of anarchy! Day after day. Week after week. Why, we'd send in the Army. We'd declare martial law!

With Iraq, this has been repeated ad nauseum until it's not only the Left that's decrying the "war" but also the Right. Conservative talk radio hosts, Fox News anchors ... everyone ... it's now generally accepted that our entire effort in Iraq is a "failure."

This redefines assinine, folks.

Is the overall situation in Iraq great? Of course not. Is it dire? Of course not. It's all about perspective. Unfortunately, we've been hammered for so long with nothing but negative that we've come to accept it. Again, one or two bomb blasts, 14 deaths, and that's it? That's all that happened in an entire freakin' country today?

Of course not.

First of all, I should say that I've pretty much bristled at the term "war" now since about the fifth day or so that we were there, when we along with Iraqi civilians started pulling down Sadaam statues. OK, I'll give you another month, or however long it was until we toasted his terrorist sons and then fished that rat turd out of a hole in the ground ... I guess until then they stood a theoretical chance of regaining power. Now that they're dead? Not so much of a chance.

But in that first week, we pretty much dismantled Iraq's army or national guard or whatever the heck that was, and we captured or killed most of the regime. Since then, we've rounded up a good percentage of the country's "most wanted," we helped put in place an interim government and then watched as the country staged actual elections (as opposed to those under Sadaam which, SURPRISE SURPRISE, resulted in him receiving 100 percent of the vote) and installed local, regional and national governments.

And we've failed? Why? Because we've lost 3,000+ of our brave men and women? That's a shame. It's terrible. It's tragic. And, sadly, it's war. Things get broken and people die. Look it up. It's happened, I'm certain you'll find, in the majority of wars since groups of men began throwing sharp objects at one another while trying to avoid becoming lunch for extremely large reptiles.

But 3,000 in five years? In a "war"? Any idea how many battles in American history resulted in more casualties? Again, perspective, people.

And that "civil war" we've managed to cause? Yeah, well, the media kind of forgets to ever point out the fact that Sunnis and Shiites have been killing each other for centuries, in Iraq and in whatever it was called before it became Iraq, and a lot of other places, too. It's worth pointing out that a lot of Iranian Shiites and Syrian Sunnis have joined this particular party, which makes this a little less of a civil war and more of a religious war. The continuation of.

But that represents the majority of what's going wrong in that country now. And it's happening in a relatively contained area of the country. The rest of Iraq is well into the rebuilding stage and is beginning to prosper.

The proof is out there. One just has to stop drinking the Kool-Aid and look past that day's headline.

(Imported from Jan. 16, 2007)