Dateline: Democratic IraqMarch 3, 2010
Media: It's a journalistic refrain that President George W. Bush's war in Iraq stained U.S. history so irreparably that only an Obama-Biden administration could redeem it. But
now a pillar of the media, Newsweek, sees a thriving democracy taking root in ravaged Mesopotamia.
Go figure. Since the U.S.-led coalition invaded Saddam Hussein's desert despotism seven years ago this month, elite news organizations depicted the military campaign as the mother of all fool's errands. Every setback was magnified as a harbinger of our imminent humiliation, each misstep told as evidence of Bush's malign intentions.
To pore over the archives of the dominant news outlets, you would think that Bush's speaking aboard that aircraft carrier, a banner declaring "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" behind him, constituted the single most embarrassing moment in the history of U.S. foreign policy. When a subsequent insurgency turned frustratingly bloody, Bush's political foes found an opportunity to reverse their initial support for the war, and the media's hostility deepened.
On Sunday Iraqis will cast ballots on which will appear 6,100 parliamentary candidates. And Newsweek's cover proclaims the "Rebirth of a Nation." It's as if the late comedian Gilda Radner had commandeered the magazine's editorial chair and, caught in a colossal misreading of history, simply said, "Never mind!"
Confesses Newsweek: "(I)t has to be said and it should be understood, that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most
certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East."
Consider that last sentence. Though it starts off with what sounds a lot like doubt, it ends up giving generous credit to a prescient George W. Bush for the success there. The cover story leads magnanimously with these November 2003 words from the former president:
"Iraqi democracy will succeed, and that success will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation. "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution."
There follow several pages of comprehensive reportage detailing that multiple, once-warring factions have discovered they have a real stake in their fledgling democracy. They're even learning the democratic art of compromise, especially when it comes to their most precious resource, oil.
Somewhere in the Dallas suburbs George W. Bush "miss him yet" ?
must be smiling.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522693
