by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Six years ago, the conventional wisdom was that Ayad Allawi, then prime minister of the appointed Iraqi Interim Government, was a puppet of the United States.<\/p>\n
Last month, though, the Allawi-led Iraqiya alliance won, by a narrow margin, more parliamentary seats than any other coalition in national elections \u2014 and he may become the country’s next prime minister.<\/p>\n
The secular Allawi successfully campaigned on the message of curbing religious interference in government \u2014 countering the often-argued charge that the U.S. has created a radical Islamic republic in Iraq.<\/p>\n
Indeed, as we look back at our years in Iraq, almost all of what once passed for conventional wisdom has been proven wrong.<\/p>\n
Yes, there is still terrorist violence in Iraq \u2014 especially recently as the leadership of the country’s next government remains in doubt. And, yes, there are still around 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq. But in the first three months of 2010, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq was about equal to those murdered in Fresno, Calif.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Iraq’s democracy has for some time now proven itself independent from the U.S. \u2014 and that old anti-war accusations that we entered the war to control Iraqi oil were false.<\/p>\n
Last June, the representative Iraqi government held its first oil auction \u2014 featuring transparent negotiations in which no American oil company was awarded an oil concession.<\/p>\n
Instead, Chinese, Russian, British, French and other national oil consortia were given the awards. These were legitimate contracts, too \u2014 not the sweetheart deals Saddam Hussein used to make with other governments in exchange for international political cover.<\/p>\n
After the U.S. removed the monstrous Saddam, many argued that we were only empowering neighboring Iran \u2014 and thus that the U.S. and the region were better off when he was in power. Putting aside the morality of playing one dictatorship off against another, has theocratic Iran really benefited from the emergence of a constitutional democracy in Iraq?<\/p>\n
Currently, the Iranian theocracy is far more unpopular among Iranians than the Iraqi democracy is among Iraqis. Ending Saddam Hussein’s reign in the short-term might have been welcome to the ruling Iranian mullahs, but a nearby functioning secular constitutional state \u2014 with a Shiite majority \u2014 is becoming its worst nightmare. Millions of restless Iranians must now wonder, “If Iraqi Shiites can talk freely on television, why can’t we?”<\/p>\n
Given Iraq’s progress these last years, it’s hard to find anyone who still argues \u2014 as the current troika now directing U.S. foreign policy, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, once did \u2014 that President Bush’s 2007 troop surge was a mistake.<\/p>\n
To a then-Sen. Clinton, the surge’s purported success required a “suspension of disbelief.” But, as we now know, the surge saved Iraq and provided a blueprint of sorts for operations in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Finally, there was the assertion that anti-war protests were all genuinely based on opposition to the American presence in Iraq rather than fueled, in large part, by partisan politics. But since January 2009, when Obama was sworn into office, there have been almost no anti-war demonstrations against the still-sizable American presence there. Popular demonstrations in the U.S. now oppose excessive government, not the war.<\/p>\n
And Hollywood has ceased making its usual, unpopular anti-war movies like “In the Valley of Elah,” “Redacted,” “The Kingdom,” “Rendition,” “Lions for Lambs” and “Home of the Brave.”<\/p>\n
Many on the left no longer oppose the Bush-Petraeus plan of slow, graduated withdrawal from Iraq, as this strategy is now sanctioned by President Obama. In the words of Vice President Biden, Iraq may well become one of the Obama administration’s “greatest achievements.”<\/p>\n
It’s true that many original supporters of the three-week removal of Saddam Hussein underestimated the ordeal of establishing a constitutional state in his absence. But it’s also evident that many who damned the war did so mainly to embarrass then-President George Bush.<\/p>\n
We see all of this mostly in hindsight. Dire assertions about Iraq did not come to pass. Anti-war passion cooled once war-critic Barack Obama was no longer a presidential candidate but became president \u2014 and commander-in-chief.<\/p>\n
And, most importantly, a successful democracy finally did arise after the fall of Saddam.<\/p>\n
\u00a92010 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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There was none of the usual Middle East barbarity. The mass murderer was not hooded and then beheaded on tape, in the manner of al Qaeda.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2004"","block_context":{"text":"July 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/july-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1366,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-allawi-dance\/","url_meta":{"origin":1695,"position":1},"title":"The Allawi Dance","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The Iraqi minister's new book quivers and\u00a0vacillate\u00a0on Islamic culture. by Raymond Ibrahim Middle East Quarterly A review of\u00a0The Crisis of Islamic Civilization\u00a0by Ali A. Allawi (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009. 304 pp.). Allawi, who at various times was Iraqi minister of trade, minister of defense, and minister\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3858,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/thoughts-on-chaos-revolution-and-radicalism\/","url_meta":{"origin":1695,"position":2},"title":"Thoughts on Chaos, Revolution, and Radicalism","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Everywhere But Iraq? No one quite knows all the causes of the unrest in Tunisia, now spreading to Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, or how this will all end, and whether this seemingly middle-class revolt dovetails to the 2009 demonstrations in Iran\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Foreign Policy"","block_context":{"text":"Foreign Policy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/foreign-policy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4448,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/americas-new-discontents\/","url_meta":{"origin":1695,"position":3},"title":"America’s New Discontents","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 22, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Sometime in the 1960s there arose a new home-grown distrust of the United States, followed by an erosion of faith in the values of the West. 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Drawing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2004"","block_context":{"text":"October 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/october-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4534,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-far-weve-come\/","url_meta":{"origin":1695,"position":5},"title":"How Far We’ve Come","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 3, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's not forget. by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers The harrowing World War II movie\u00a0Twelve O'Clock High\u00a0begins with a postwar bald and bespectacled Dean Jagger (Colonel Harvey Stovall) riding his bicycle out to an old airfield in Archbury, England, that years earlier had been home to the 918th B-17 Bombing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2004"","block_context":{"text":"December 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/december-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1695"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1697,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions\/1697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}