Hope

I’m guilty of repeatedly noting the outright bias in the MSM when it comes to accurate reporting on the Iraq war and all other information relative to the Middle East. The MSM’s narrative is that the invasion of Iraq was wrong (and that Arab countries in general are unjustly oppressed). All information the MSM reports must continuously support that narrative. Whether it’s information or images, the story they tell moves further and further from the truth on the ground.

Why is it, for example, that we never see images like the ones contained in this LiveLeak.com video montage? There’s no doubt that this video strives to depict our “occupation” in a favorable light, but it is information that should be seen by the same viewers who are regularly served images that paint our presence in Iraq in an unfavorable light.

Today, the MSM grudgingly admits that our recent actions in Iraq has lead to some success, but Left-leaning talking heads and much of the Democratic leadership continue to insist that we should leave asap, regardless of the progress that is being made. Why? They argue that Iraqi “political progress” is lacking. Heck, if political progress were a criterion in the US, we’d disband the Congress and start over.

Bill Whittle’s comments intersect both topics:

When Michael Moore makes a hugely successful film praising Saddam’s paradise and calling these people who bomb women and children in marketplaces “freedom fighters,” and when an election turns and places into Congressional power a political party dedicated to reproducing that helicopter tableau as soon as possible... what would you do? Because if you guess wrong and the Americans leave, you will be taken out into the street in front of your family and have your head sawed off.

I think the Surge has had spectacular success not because of the additional troops so much as for the fact that when the media and the Democrats demanded we cut and run… we did not cut and run. We doubled down. When the calls for defeat and dishonor were at their loudest – sad to say a not unwarranted street rep we had made for ourselves – somehow, somehow we simply just hung on and gave them not a retreat but a charge.

Jesus Christ, but that must have gotten someone’s attention. Yes, the Surge is working. But I believe it is not a surge of boots that is doing the work so much as it is a surge of hope.

And hope… well, hope is a dangerous thing. For every day that Iraq returns not only to normal but to free normal is a day remembered. It is a day to which other, darker days may be compared.

Every day of success, every newly opened shop, every school and soccer game free of secret police and each and every night devoid of the terror of arbitrary arrest and execution is something to lose. It is something the murdering bastards of al Qaeda cannot give but can only take away. We have taken their sword from them. They wield it now only against themselves. They will do it, too: more pain and more death are coming, for that is all they know how to do. But hope walks the streets of Baghdad now, hope in the form of decent and brave young men and women who have held a line against all odds and perhaps bought with their courage and their blood the time we need for that hope to spread.

Whether you agree with Whittle’s assessment or not, you’ve got to admit that under Saddam and his murderous sons, Iraqis had very little reason to hope. Under the al Qaida “insurgency,” with suicide bombers and public beheadings, hope was a rare commodity indeed. But now that we’ve made profound sacrifices and achieved important progress on the ground, hope has germinated in Iraq.

There are those who insist that our actions in Iraq have ruined our international image and that only through retreat and a more humble and pacific policy will the world once again look to the USA as a beacon of hope. Ironically, they have somehow lost sight of the fact that intentional or not, that’s exactly what our sometimes bumbling actions in Iraq have precipitated. Hope.