Iraq today is, undeniably, a much better place than it has been in all of its history, unless you’re a former Ba’thist (i.e. former Arabist Fascist) favored by Saddam. And the enemies of freedom, both the traditional variety and the theocratic variety, are on the defensive in the region. A win not just for Iraq, and not just for the United States, but for the entire human race.

Pardon those of us who’ve been watching this all along if we are a little irritated by the "President Bush Can Do No Right" crowd’s continued efforts to make a sow’s ear out of this beautiful silk purse.

The average number of people killed under Saddam was 7,000 a month, even when we include the 12 years when he was constrained by the no-fly zones and sanctions.  Today the rate of death in Iraq is a tenth of that, there is a free press, leaders are elected, and there is freedom of speech and assembly.   Access to water and sewage systems has doubled, as has GDP.

It might not be Shangri-La by our standards, but it’s a hell of an improvement.

it shows a total misunderstanding of what is really going on in the Middle East or the strategic cost of the Iraq war and how it has diminished the US and empowered our enemies.

On the contrary, all our enemies have been weakened.  Iran now has to deal with an Iraqi population that is increasingly hostile to them due to their support of the brutal Shia militias, which were crushed at great expense to Iran.   Syria has lost their Baathist benefactor.  Al Qaeda has been utterly discredited and defeated.  And there are resentful mutterings from Arabs that the only real democracies in the region are Iraq and Israel.

Will you ever see anything positive in Iraq?  Over Saddam’s 20+ term, some 2 million people died in Iraq, Iran and Kuwait.  It works out to somewhere around 80k people per year.  iraqbodycount.com currently finds around 90k killed over the last 5 years (and this figure is not considered by advocates of our action in Iraq to be very credible).  Is that not an improvement?

No, it’s not ideal, but it should give you some perspective on who Saddam was.  And thankfully, the recent rate of violence has decreased dramatically, largely due to a commitment by the Bush administration’s surge. 

Yes, that same plan that the left criticized in favor of an expedient retreat seems to have worked.  Was it the only factor?  No, but it was the enabling factor in the stabilization of Iraq.  Perhaps it should have been implemented from the beginning, and there I believe you have room to criticize.  But it worked, and your inability to recognize this only shows that partisanship is more important than fact to you.

Which enemy is arguably more powerful?  Iran you say?  I don’t think so.  The amount of influence they wield in Iraq is overstated, as evidenced by Iraq’s handling of the Mahdi Army.  They are not a credible threat to us unless they become a nuclear power, an aspiration they held well before 2003.

More electricity and clean water is available now than was during Saddam, and more oil is being pumped and sold, the revenue from which is better allocated throughout Iraq, not just to the Baathists.

And as for the chest beating in 2003, it was surely a PR mistake for the President to make the speech in front of that banner.  But the banner itself was put up by the crew of the ship, and not at the administration’s direction. 

I challenge you, mikeca, to find one positive thing about the war.  Where is your indignation for our action in Kosovo?  You seem unwilling to recognize that anything good has come of the war in Iraq, as you must feel that it will threaten your political position.  Frankly, that’s rather sad. 

Today Iraq is much less violent than it was one year ago, but that is hardly makes Iraq heaven on earth. Millions of Iraqis have been forced to flee their country and millions more are internally displaced inside their country. Baghdad is now a far more ethnically segregated city than it was, with blast walls separating neighborhoods.

It will be many years before life in Iraq returns to normal, and while we all hope that ‘normal’ will be much better than under Saddam, the situation in Iraq is still so fragile, we can not be sure that will be true.

The biggest problem with this kind of chest beating is that like the naive mission accomplished photo op of 2003, it shows a total misunderstanding of what is really going on in the Middle East or the strategic cost of the Iraq war and how it has diminished the US and empowered our enemies.