Some good positive news.
Unemployment is still high, but is diminishing steadily. Wages are soaring. Shops are filled with consumer goods, which are flying off the shelves. Nearly a million more Iraqis have cars since Saddam was ousted.
Public services are better than ever before. Electricity is on in Basra 23 hours a day now, compared with just two under Saddam. Despite frequent sabotage and a deteriorating physical plant, oil production has nearly attained prewar levels.
The liberation of Iraq has had ripple effects elsewhere. Syrians demanding human rights staged a sit-in at the parliament building in Damascus March 8, a protest that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
"Support for violent Islam is waning in almost all Muslim countries," wrote Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. "Discussions from Libya to Saudi Arabia are all about liberalization. Ever since Sept. 11, when the spotlight has been directed on these societies and their dysfunctions laid bare to the world, it is the hard-liners who are in retreat and the moderates on the rise."
Some of the hard-liners are changing their tunes. Libya has agreed to give up its weapons of mass destruction, and has permitted U.S. and British experts to come to that country to dismantle them. Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi made it clear what was behind his change of heart. "I saw what the Americans did in Iraq, and I was afraid," he told Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Many problems remain. The resistance in Iraq, though weakening, is still active. The tenuous peace among Shiite, Sunni and Kurd may yet break down. But the wonder is not that there are no serious problems. The wonder is that there aren't more of them. Only the most blind of partisans can deny that significant progress has been made. And however hard the remaining steps toward a democratic Iraq may be, it seems pretty clear the hardest steps already have been taken.
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