A Canadian view of the US and Iraq
canada.com
The good news you never hear about
Elizabeth Nickson
National Post
May 15, 2004
Anti-Americanism entered the first pangs of its death throes this week with the continued showing of the prison photos. The national mourning, the hearings, the shock, self-flagellation and guilt, punctuated by civilian Nicholas Berg's beheading -- the whole thing became so serious that we finally all got bolted out of our smug complacency and started to make, arguably for the first time, the strict adult calculations of right and wrong. The chattering of the chattering classes was, just for that moment, stilled, and then it switched courses in mid-stream and some began to support the country, rather than continuing to parrot the lazy evil platitudes of Edward Said. And finally, the extraordinary sacrifice of those kids over there in Iraq, those kids from the Red States, where Tina Brown, Sidney Blumenthal and Bob Woodward never go, began to be recognized as so heroic and difficult, it defied belief. And the hopes of the whacko left for another Vietnam were dashed.
Why? Let's look at just what the Americans have done in the last year and two months (without us). They have freed 24-million people from what was reasonably described as one giant 36-year-long Gulag. Thirty-five percent of Iraqi households now have satellite dishes and there are 120 free newspapers, some sharply critical of the Coalition, most promoting democracy and encouraging debate. Only two which recommended violence against the Coalition have been shut down, one for only 60 days. Iraqis now have free use of the Internet, and Internet cafes litter Baghdad. There are 30 Iraqi blogs in Baghdad alone. All would have been killed under Saddam, users and producers.
Six hundred judges are working in a fully functioning and independent judicial system. Iraqis now have a right to a fair, expeditious and open trial, the right to defense counsel at all stages of the proceedings, and the right to remain silent. The use of torture on civilians has been abolished.
There is a new Bill of Rights, which is even more inclusive than that of the U.S. It includes the freedom of religious belief and practice, and the rights to free expression, to peacefully assemble, to organize political parties, and to organize and form unions.
Twenty-five hundred of the 12,000 schools needing repairs have been renovated; 869 are currently under construction. The salaries of teachers have been more than doubled. The curriculum has been revised, Baath party officials fired and tens of thousands of new teachers trained. Fifty-nine million new textbooks have been supplied by the United States and the UN Oil for Food program. USAID officials edited schoolbooks to include Shia history and culture, which was hitherto excluded.
Doctors' salaries have gone from an average of US$20 per month to a minimum of US$120 per month. Thirty million doses of children's vaccinations have been distributed. In 2002, Saddam's budget for his Ministry of Health was US$16-million; today, it is US$948-million. The health care system is now open to all Iraqis, with 30% more using it than before. Half the medical schools now have Internet access, with the rest planned to be up and running by the end of the summer. Saddam had isolated his medical community for 35 years; 52 primary health care clinics have been renovated and 600 have since been substantially re-equipped.
Three-hundred -and-forty-thousand people now have cell phones, increasing by 15,000 each month. Iraqis can now make international calls. By summer, the average Iraqi will have 16 hours of electricity per day, a 40% increase from pre-war levels. USAID is building three sewage treatment plants (there were none), and their water and sanitation projects will benefit 14.5 million Iraqis. Pre-war, only 50-60% had clean water.
A hundred thousand American kids in their 20s and 30s from Omaha, Nebraska and Eugene, Oregon are doing this work, and when they come home, they will rightly love and respect their country more than we Canadians can even imagine. Contrast this with our supra-national humanist elites safely inhabiting their socio-cultural bubble, who encourage anti-American hatred at every opportunity and would casually write off 24 million people, just to give America a black eye. What have they done but endlessly complain?
In every country in the Middle East and in southeast Asia, and in most countries in Africa, prisoner abuse is so much worse than what happened at Abu Ghraib that there is literally no basis for comparison. And there are millions in those prisons, where the international Red Cross, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are never allowed. Contrast this to the thousand or so terrorist suspects, whose treatment is subject to constant scrutiny, criticism and "outing" by the international press and various NGOs. Contrast the mandated 25% of seats for women in the new Iraqi Parliament with the Turkish father who, last week, ritually strangled his daughter with piano wire because she had been raped.
And then there's Iraq. Did al-Jazeera complain while Saddam killed 300,000 of his own citizens and buried them in unmarked mass graves? Was there endless coverage of the insane tortures he perpetuated? Any videos of Saddam feeding Iraqis into wood chippers feet-first? Were there publicly televised shamings of his defense secretary, or the defense secretary who oversaw the massacres in Kashmir or East Timor? I don't think so.
My father stopped some of his men from shooting German prisoners in the days after the landing at Juno Beach. War is hell, s--t happens. It doesn't make it right, but it's the photos of the almost 800 young American men and women who have given their lives for a free Iraq that really move me. Time for us all to grow up, and recognize America for what it has, under George W. Bush, become: the hope of the world. |
