Optimists in Iraq
The natives must not be reading Reuters.
WSJ.com
<font size=4>
A paradox of the Iraq War that began a year ago today is that the Iraqis living through it are far more optimistic than the American elites who fret from afar. As predicted, and despite the car bombs and other violence that dominate the headlines, Iraqis really do believe they've been liberated.
That's the finding of the latest National Survey of Iraq, conducted in February by Oxford Research International. While Iraqis say security, or the lack of it, remains their largest problem, they also report that their lives and prospects have improved since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
<font size=3>
More than 56% say that things are either much or somewhat better now than in the spring of 2003, compared with 19% who say it is much or somewhat worse. And as the nearby box shows, Iraqis are even more optimistic about their lives a year from now--with only 7% expecting things to be worse, compared with 71% who expect improvement. Granted that life under Saddam and international sanctions couldn't have been much worse, but their current optimism is still striking given so much negative media coverage. Iraqis must not be reading Reuters.
The survey does also reveal some ambivalence that Saddam was toppled by a foreign military. Iraqis split almost down the middle, for example, on whether the "U.S.-led" invasion had "humiliated" (41.2%) or "liberated" (41.8%) their country. The former no doubt reflects a deep Iraqi nationalism that chafes at the foreign military presence.
On the other hand, asked how long coalition forces should remain in Iraq, only 15% of Iraqis say they should "leave now." More than 18% believe they should "remain until security is restored," and nearly 36% say they should "remain until an Iraqi government is in place." In short, Iraqis want Americans to stay long enough to ensure a safe transition to a sustainable new government.
All of this is consistent with much of the anecdotal evidence showing progress in Iraq. The Iraqi Governing Council has agreed to an interim constitutional blueprint protecting minority rights and religious liberty. While the various ethnic groups are jostling for political advantage, so far they are compromising in a way that foreign pessimists thought was impossible. Oil exports have nearly reached their pre-war levels above 2.5 million barrels a day, and the economy is slowly improving.
All of this has of course been earned at no small price in American blood and treasure. The Baathist and jihadist insurgency is able to destroy many lives even if it can't affect the strategic progress being made. No doubt the violence will only increase as the June 30 handover to Iraqi control approaches. Civilians--Iraqi and foreign--will become more frequent targets as the insurgents' political desperation increases.
Bullish in Baghdad
Q: What is your expectation for how things overall in your life will be in a year from now?
Much better 36.7%
Somewhat better 34.3%
About the same 9.5%
Somewhat worse 3.2%
Much worse 3.4%
Difficult to say 12.8%
Source: Oxford Research International, National Survey of Iraq, February 2004
Each of the more than 500 American men and women who have died during and since the invasion is someone's father, son, or sister. They include many such as Fern Holland, the 33-year-old former Washington lawyer who was killed last week in an ambush near Hillah. She was working with the coalition authority to promote Iraqi women's rights and had helped draft sections of the new interim constitution. "If I die," she had written in a January e-mail, "know that I'm doing precisely what I want to be doing."
<font size=4>
The way to honor her commitment, and sacrifice, is not to impugn the war as a "fiasco" as the new Spanish Prime Minister so mindlessly has, or to rush to pull out because we haven't yet found stockpiles of WMD. It is to fulfill the tremendous opportunity that those who have died have opened, by helping to build Iraq into a stable, democratic Arab state as the first step toward transforming the Middle East. A year after Americans began marching to Baghdad, this is the legacy worth celebrating.
<font size=3>
Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
