Doomsayers choose to ignore the ground facts in Iraq

The Australian ^ | 1st July 2005 | Frank Devine

[naturalman1975]

KEVIN Rudd isn't much chop as a ballet dancer. Did he ever say he was? No. But our ace survivor, Douglas Wood, never claimed to be an "on-the-ground national security policy expert". Yet Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Rudd was embarrassingly insistent last week about this being something Wood wasn't.

Why go to the trouble when Wood was clearly identifiable as an engaging seat-of-the-(possibly rather frayed)-pants entrepreneur, and nothing more?

Rudd was swatting at Wood for saying things like "God bless America" and "the Iraqis got me out ... so training Iraqi armed forces must be working". Not to mention apologising to John Howard and George W. Bush for urging, under duress as a kidnap victim, that Australia and the US withdraw from Iraq.

Kim Beazley also sought to put Wood in his place. "Things are going very badly in Iraq, indeed," he averred. "John Howard has a case to answer there."

God knows what Rudd and Beazley think they are achieving by jumping on the policy soapbox to refute a traveller's tales. It's much too late to win goodie points by being able to say "I told you so" about things going badly in Iraq. That's no sure road to popularity, anyway.

Two things need to be kept in mind when you hear generalisations about how badly things are going in Iraq. The first is that many assessments are coloured by the intensity of the assessor's past predictions of doom. The other is that today's going badly can turn into tomorrow's going not so badly.

A pair of headlines from The New York Times illustrates both these variables. The first read: "Iraq moves further toward a political stalemate." Sunni leaders were demanding more representatives on a committee drafting a new Iraqi constitution than they had been offered by a government elected in a poll largely boycotted by Sunni voters. The Times, an avid doomsayer, made it pretty clear that prospects for Shia-Sunni-Kurdish political co-operation were, well, doomed.

Four days passed. The second headline in The Times read: "Iraqi deadlock ends as Sunnis accept deal on charter panel" - the same deal as before, 15 seats on a 55-member panel. Not all Sunni leaders backed the deal and some diehard Saddamites will probably continue to fight it in the streets. But things could be seen as going less badly in Iraq on June 16, when the second Times headline appeared, than on June 12, when the paper published the first.

Though daily killings by terrorist bombers, with high tolls of civilians, give an impression of chaos, only the boldest of doomsayers would be dogmatic about whom the fighting is going badly for.

With US forces making well-planned regional and locale hits from fortified bases, and Iraqis increasingly taking over regular patrolling, foreign jihadists are suffering heavy casualties. Their leadership, either opportunistically or methodically, is being progressively picked off.

Things may be going even less badly for Iraq after October, when a referendum on the proposed constitution is planned. That is to be followed in December by national elections to choose a permanent government.

Despite bloodthirsty threats, the insurgents stand exposed as impotent in trying to stop Iraqi elections. It will be even harder for them with substantial numbers of Sunnis joining in.

Things are likely to go much less badly for an Iraq with a constitutional government than Iraq without one.

Other prospects for less bad going emerged from a conference on Iraq's future held in Brussels last week, jointly hosted by the US and the European Union. Representatives of more than 80 countries and international organisations attended.

A bit ambitiously, Iraq asked for an international program to be created on the lines of the Marshall Plan, which restored a ruined Europe after World WarII. However, all delegations joined in a pledge to assist Iraq strengthen its security and economy. Just talk? Maybe. But who will proclaim the reappearance of a multicultural approach to Iraq as a sign that things are going badly?

One finds numerous signs of things going one way or another in Iraq. For example, on June 22, Iraq Airways made its first domestic passenger flight since the invasion - from Baghdad to the relatively peaceful oil city of Basra, flying time 55 minutes, fare $US70 ($92).

If you are looking for things to go badly, you'd count on a Baghdad-Basra flight being shot down. If otherwise inclined, you would take hopeful note of the refurbishment of Basra airport, being undertaken to make Basra, rather than insurgency-rattled Baghdad, Iraq's main centre for direct international flights.

We also have a choice as preferred foreign affairs spokesman between Rudd, starting nervously at opinions expressed by other than national security policy experts, and Jordanian Foreign Minister Farouk Kasrawi, who commented after the Brussels conference: "Iraq has long been burdened by turmoil, but the good wind now blows its way."

[hsalaw]

"It's much too late to win goodie points by being able to say "I told you so" about things going badly in Iraq. That's no sure road to popularity, anyway."

Howard, Bush, Blair. This is a good article, and points out the importance of taking the long view and not getting hysterical. Like, for example, Pelosi, Reid, Rangel, Kerry, Hagel (yech), and Kennedy.