Remember this:
Writing on the left-wing Web site AlterNet last March, senior editor Tai Moses expressed dread of the coming of a war that "could create more than a million refugees."The BBC, citing a "confidential" U.N. document, predicted that up to 500,000 Iraqis would be seriously injured during the first phase of an American attack, while 1 million would flee the country and 2 million more would be internally displaced.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference foresaw the "displacement of hundreds of thousands of refugees," plus "total destruction and a humanitarian tragedy whose scale cannot be predicted."
Well, well...seems they were WRONG.
A few weeks ago, the United Nations shut down the Ashrafi refugee camp in southwestern Iran. For years Ashrafi had been the largest facility in the world housing displaced Iraqis, tens of thousands of whom had been driven from their homes by Saddam Hussein's brutality. But with Hussein behind bars and his regime crushed, Iraqi exiles have been flocking home. By mid-February the camp had literally emptied out. Now, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports, "nothing remains of Ashrafi but rubble and a few stones."
Well, well...crow anyone?
In a nationwide survey conducted by Britain's Oxford Research International, 56 percent of Iraqis say their lives are better now than before the war; only 19 percent say things are worse. Because of "Bush's war," Iraqis today brim with optimism. Fully 71 percent expect their lives to be even better a year from now; less than 7 percent say they'll be worse. Iraq today may just be the most upbeat, forward-looking country in the Arab world.With hard work and a little luck, it may soon be the best governed as well. The interim constitution approved by the Iraqi Governing Council protects freedom of speech and assembly, guarantees the right to privacy, en- sures equality for women and subordinates the military to civilian control. It is the most progressive constitution in the Arab Middle East.
Nearly a year after the fall of Baghdad, Iraq is hugely improved. Unemployment has been cut in half. Wages are climbing. The devastated southern marshlands are being restored. More Iraqis own cars and telephones than before Hussein was ousted. Some 2,500 schools have been rehabbed by the U.S.-headed coalition. Above all, Iraq's people are free. The horror and cruelty of the Hussein era are gone forever.
This is the face of failure? This is what we should turn over to the self-serving egos and thieves at the UN to bungle and mismanage, or cut and run ala Clinton, leaving whomever is strongest and most brutal to rule. Again.
No, everything is not rosy in Iraq, but much more is going right than wrong. As the convenient camera coverage of the outrage in Fallujah demonstrates, American opinion is being played as events are orchestrated for American political consumption. The Left has given the insurgents and terrorists hope that we will cut and run, and our people on the ground are paying a high price for the election-year rhetoric spewed by Senators Kennedy, Biden and Kerry.