New World Man

Seekerblog has some good analysis of a recent Iraq poll that was heavily referenced on the blogosphere last week, but deserves more elucidation. Click and check out the charts and commentary related to .

Also checked out this great post at a new iraqi blog (hat tip for both of these links to roger l simon)

To may outsiders, like those who protested last year, who will protest today. This was a fools errand, it brought nothing but death and destruction. I am sheltered in Iraq, but I know how the world feels, how people have come to either love or hate Bush, as though heis the emobdiement of this war. As though this war is part of Bush, they forget the over twenty million Iraqis, they forget the Middle Easterners, they forget the average person on the street, the average man with the average dream.

Ask him if it was worth it. Ask him what is different. Ask him if he would go through it again, go ahead ask him, ask me, many of you have.

Now I answer you, I answer you on behalf of myself, and my countrymen. I dont care what your news tells you, what your television and newspapers say, this is how we feel. Despite all that has happened. Despite all the hurt, the pain, blood, sweat and tears. These two years have given us hope we never had.

Before March 20, 2003, we were in a dungeon. We did not see the light. Saddam Hussain was crushing Iraq’s spirit slowly, we longed for his end, but knew we could not challenge him, or his diabolical seed who would no doubt follow him and continue his generation of hell on Earth.

Why is hope increasing in Iraq? The elections no doubt played a big part, as can be seen in the charts linked to above. The most significant increase yet seen in opinion polls happened from the period just before to the period just after. It also seems that acts of terrorism against Iraqi citizens has plummeted in the last two months. A pair of posts at the Belmont Club detail the teactical circumstances that have brought the insurgency down: the steady willingness of US troops to take greater risks over the , increasing foot patrols in the most dangerous areas, and the increasing availability of more and more effective Iraqi units.

It’s illusory to map the causal flow in only one direction. Certainly military action against insurgents decreases thier effectiveness, increasing security for Iraqis, and therefore hope. But as hope increases, as legitimate milestones towards a free, democratic, and prosperous Iraq are achieved, the insurgents game must seem more pointless–acts of terror are less able to demoralize the citizenry and increasingly only the most deranged terrorists, for whom the means outwiegh the unachievable ends, remain.

We seem to be seeing the emergence of a virtuous cycle of morale in Iraq. The gameplan of the insurgency was to demoralize the Iraqi people, the American soldiers, and the American public, causing an early withdrawal, and upsetting the establishment of democracy (see Zarqawi memo). With morale on the rise all around, their game is over–any cards they had to play have only decreased in value.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 21st, 2005 at 17:08 and is filed under war on terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.