Saturday, December 13, 2008
More evidence that the war in Iraq is won
Iraqis, it appears, are having fun again.
CWCID: Maggie's.
2 Comments:
By 
JPMcT, at
Sat Dec 13, 05:23:00 PM:
Gosh! According to Michael Moore, the Iraquis have been out playing in the park and flying balloons all along....haven't they??!
By 
, at
Sun Dec 14, 09:55:00 AM:
Well, I'm sure some Iraqis enjoyed themselves very much during Eid, but pictures of an amusement park don't tell whole story. Bombs have been going off quite a bit here before and just after the SOFA was finalized, I've seen it happen. The amusement park in the pictures in the linked post is in Karkh, a predominantly Sunni district in eastern Baghdad and one of the more safer districts, it borders the International Zone. On the other side of the Tigris you have mixed districts and the ever problematic Sadr City district which is all Shia. Violence is still fairly routine there. And there continue to be a myriad of other problems in Iraq right now. I have doubts that Iraq's government, which is full of kleptocrats, will be ready to lead when the Coalition Forces leave. Sectarian violence could always flare up. Iraq has no viable industries other than oil. And there is frightening poverty which undermines the stability of the Country. But is the country as a whole safer? It sure is, a year ago there were hundreds of violent incidents in Iraq every day, now its under 20 a day. Of course there are elections next month so watch out. You can't read too much into a day at the amusement park. Things aren't completely safe here yet, and to some extent I Iraqis have also developed a higher tolerance for violence than the average Westerner. That being said, I believe we have achieved Victory in Iraq. Violence IS down, internally displaced persons are returning home, and there's been a great deal of rebuilding. But I'm not ready to crow about it just yet. The pictures are a good sign, but context is everything.
