Islamo-Fascists Bring Malnutrition, and U.S. Invasion Gets the Blame
Old Media have as much difficulty with war-torn Iraq as apologists for slavery had for Civil War and Reconstruction. Why, things were much better when there was an autocratic authority and there was no opposition. This WaPo piece, that goes against the grain of the overwhelmingly good news from most of Iraq, cites the decline in health care and the rise of malnutrition "since the war." True, U.S. forces have nothing to do with these unfortunate developments, which are chiefly caused by terrorist attacks on doctors, hospitals and groups like Doctors Without Borders. But if we had not attacked Saddam Hussein's tyranny, all these "insurgents" and "militants" would not have risen up and made life miserable for so many children! This account also reminds one of the downside of freedom after the fall of the Soviet empire, beginning in 1989. Things were so much better with Stalin, and now it's Saddam who prompts nostalgia for the good old days. Here is the bad news in a nutshell: "After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from 'wasting,' a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein." So, malnutrition is somewhat worse than it was before the liberation of Iraq, but is an increase of 3.7 percent a reason for calling the regime change into question? But it gets worse. Consider this: "Iraqi health officials like to surprise visitors by pointing out that the nutrition issue facing young Iraqis a generation ago was obesity. Malnutrition, they say, appeared in the early 1990s with U.N. trade sanctions championed by Washington to punish the government led by President Saddam Hussein for invading Kuwait in 1990. "International aid efforts and the U.N. oil-for-food program helped reduce the ruinous impact of sanctions, and the rate of acute malnutrition among the youngest Iraqis gradually dropped from a peak of 11 percent in 1996 to 4 percent in 2002. But the invasion in March 2003 and the widespread looting in its aftermath severely damaged the basic structures of governance in Iraq, and persistent violence across the country slowed the pace of reconstruction almost to a halt." There is considerable confusion to disintangle here, as well as some questionable assumptions. But let us, for the sake of argument, take this report at face value. Iraqi children were chubby little things until the wicked United States talked the world into imposing sanctions. (Hmm. Americans are getting chubbier. Is that Bush's fault too?) If we hadn't done so, Saddam would have been able to pursue his weapons program (Whoops. U.N. inspectors discouraged that, not the sanctions, right?) without depriving the children, but a resolute leader has to make hard choices! This might suggest the error of not ousting Saddam in 1990, but, alas, our bungled administration for the last two years should cast doubt on that proposition. On the other hand, the righteous United Nations helped with its Oil-for-Food program as best it could. (Just in case you might wonder where billions dollars of oil revenues went during those salad days.) So, isn't Old Media's lesson clear? The price of removing tyrants, and fighting surviving loyalists, is simply too high. Never mind those smiling faces on millions of Iraqis grateful to our fighting forces for freeing them from tyranny. Resistance is futile! Combine this with the favorable Old Media reports of desperate efforts by the enemy to counteract the U.S.-Iraqi success in Fallujah, with attacks on other cities' police stations and car bombs in Baghdad, not to mention Al-Jazeera's helpful discovery of "war crimes" by a young Marine in the middle of a dangerous combat situation (dwarfing minor nuisances like beheadings), and you have a concerted effort to make freedom fail. Nothing written by enemy agents could be worse than the propaganda now being disseminated gratuitously by Old Media. |
This photograph shows the Hamas jihadist enemy burning a US soldier in effigy in Nablus on Friday morning (11-19-04)during a demonstration against the US 'offensive' in Iraq.