Iraq Is A Success While Tibet Remains A Problem – Macro Viewpoints & Charles Krauthammer

Last July, we wrote an article about Iraq that offered a different view point than most media articles at that time. That article, titled “Iraq & Tibet – Strategic Will Of The American and Chinese People” was received very well and it remains one of the top 10 articles of this blog to this day. In that article, we laid out our case why a continued American presence in Iraq is vital to long-term American interests. (https://cinemarasik.com/2008/07/25/iraq–tibet–strategic-will-of-americans-and-chinese.aspx  ).

Iraq is already a success and, in a short period of 6 years, is on its way to becoming a modern, democratic state due to American values, American troop presence and American focus on improving Iraq. In contrast, even after 60 years, Tibet continues to be a problem for China, an occupied country of oppressed people held down by the heavy boot of the Chinese military.

We covered the success of the surge in Iraq and the critical as well as courageous stand by President Bush in our September 13, 2008 article “The Second Term of President George W. Bush – A Foreign Policy Success Story” (https://cinemarasik.com/2008/09/12/the-second-term-of-president-george-w-bush—a-foreign-policy-success-story.aspx  ).

Last week Iraq had a free, democratic election in which 14,400 candidates from 400 parties participated. The election took place without any violence. The nationalist, pro-Iraq parties swept the election dealing a major defeat to both the Islamic parties as well as pro-Iranian parties.

This is simply an amazing success of the Bush-Petraeus effort that stabilized Iraq, brought the Sunnis into the electoral process and virtually eliminated the insurgency. Yet, the American TV and Print media virtually ignored this great “win” in Iraq.

Rarely do we come across an article that we totally concur with, especially when the author of the article is not someone with whom we generally see eye-to-eye. We speak of Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post and his article “Iraq: Good News Is No News” on February 13, 2009. We have always been slightly left-of-central liberals in our social and political outlook. Pragmatism is our motto and we abide by the Keynes dictum “We change our minds when the facts change.” Mr. Krauthammer, on the other hand, is a doctrinaire conservative Republican.  

We strongly encourage all readers to read Mr. Krauthammer’s article at  www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/12/AR2009021203012.html .  Below are some excerpts from this article:

• “Iraq moved away from religious sectarianism toward more secular nationalism. “All the parties that had the words ‘Islamic’ or ‘Arab’ in their names lost,” noted Middle East expert Amir Taheri. “By contrast, all those that had the words ‘Iraq’ or ‘Iraqi’ gained.”
  
• “Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went from leader of a small Islamic party to leader of the “State of Law Party,” campaigning on security and secular nationalism. He won a smashing victory. His chief rival, a more sectarian and pro-Iranian Shiite religious party, was devastated. Another major Islamic party, the pro-Iranian Sadr faction, went from 11 percent of the vote to 3 percent, losing badly in its stronghold of Baghdad. The Islamic Fadhila party that had dominated Basra was almost wiped out.”
  
• “The big strategic winner here is the United States. The big loser is Iran. The parties Tehran backed are in retreat. The prime minister who staked his career on a strategic cooperation agreement with the United States emerged victorious. Moreover, this realignment from enemy state to emerging democratic ally, unlike Egypt’s flip from Soviet to U.S. ally in the 1970s, is not the work of a single autocrat (like Anwar Sadat), but a reflection of national opinion expressed in a democratic election.”
  
• “This is not to say that these astonishing gains are irreversible. There loom three possible threats: (a) a coup from a rising and relatively clean military disgusted with the corruption of civilian politicians — the familiar post-colonial pattern of the past half-century; (b) a strongman emerging from a democratic system (Maliki?) and then subverting it, following the Russian and Venezuelan models; or (c) the collapse of the current system because of a premature U.S. withdrawal that leads to a collapse of security.”