Disappointing the pessimist

Jack Kelly:

The Associated Press reported Monday that Sunni Arabs in Iraq are prepared to end their boycott of talks to form a national unity government, thus disappointing yet again those journalists who've been telling us for two years civil war is imminent.

It seemed last Wednesday as if the pessimists might finally be right after terrorists destroyed the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. Shia militias attacked more than a dozen Sunni mosques in retaliation. An unprecedented three day curfew was imposed in Baghdad in order to curb sectarian violence in which more than 100 people were killed.

The outbreak of violence convinced conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. that the U.S. mission in Iraq has failed.

"Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans," Mr. Buckley wrote in National Review. "The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough."

Mr. Buckley is of the "realist" school of foreign policy, which believes, in essence, that "freedom and democracy are for me, but not for thee." The lesser breeds without the Law, like Iraq's Arabs, aren't ready for it now, and probably won't be ever. Buckley noted with apparent approval the view of an anonymous soldier quoted in the New York Times who said he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and Shiites from each other's throats.

Mr. Buckley's pessimism may be premature. Both Sunni and Shia religious leaders have called for calm. The Moqtada al Sadr, whose militia was in the forefront of the retaliatory attacks on Sunni mosques, prayed publicly Saturday with the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars. Thousands of ordinary Sunnis and Shias joined together in half a dozen Iraqi cities to demonstrate for peace.

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"Nearly every Iraq story is inaccurate," wrote Ben Connable, a Marine major stationed in Fallujah, in an email to a friend. "The numbers are inflated, the damage exaggerated, the estimates are misleading, and the predictions are based on pure conjecture, often by people far removed from the problem."

"The Iraqi military and police forces have held together and they are doing their jobs," Maj. Connable said. "In 2004, the Iraqi military and police all but collapsed. The fact that Shia soldiers who make up the vast majority of the troops have stayed at their posts, held back the Shia militiamen, and prevented an increase in violence is remarkable. This should be one of the feature stories on the nightly news, but it barely received mention."

Those danged Iraqis. They continue to disappoint by failing to be disappointing. Could it be that most of them value freedom, democracy and peace as much as white Christians do?

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Conservatives who did not support the liberation of Iraq are almost as quick as liberal opponents on giving up on the enterprise and surrendering to the terrorist. When you do not support an operation it is easy to find reasons to quit it. The destruction of a mosque was a tipping point for a few. Fortunately it was not for the Iraqis and as Ralph Peters points out below it is turning into a strategic defat for the enemy in Iraq.