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danaerisMy father just sent me this op ed that was in a Canadian newspaper (The National Post). I find all the stuff this guy claims Bush has accomplished to be interesting. Anyone who is more informed than me have any comments?
Anti-Americanism entered the first pangs of its death throes this week with
the continued showing of the prison photos. The national mourning, the
hearings, the shock, self-flagellation and guilt, punctuated by civilian
Nicholas Berg's beheading -- the whole thing became so serious that we
finally all got bolted out of our smug complacency and started to make,
arguably for the first time, the strict adult calculations of right and
wrong. The chattering of the chattering classes was, just for that moment,
stilled, and then it switched courses in mid-stream and some began to
support the country, rather than continuing to parrot the lazy evil
platitudes of Edward Said. And finally, the extraordinary sacrifice of those
kids over there in Iraq, those kids from the Red States, where Tina Brown,
Sidney Blumenthal and Bob Woodward never go, began to be recognized as so
heroic and difficult, it defied belief. And the hopes of the whacko left for
another Vietnam were dashed.
Why? Let's look at just what the Americans have done in the last year and
two months (without Canada). They have freed 24-million people from what was
reasonably described as one giant 36-year-long Gulag. Thirty-five percent of
Iraqi households now have satellite dishes and there are 120 free
newspapers, some sharply critical of the Coalition, most promoting democracy
and encouraging debate. Only two which recommended violence against the
Coalition have been shut down, one for only 60 days. Iraqis now have free
use of the Internet, and Internet cafes litter Baghdad. There are 30 Iraqi
blogs in Baghdad alone. All would have been killed under Saddam, users and
producers.
Six hundred judges are working in a fully functioning and independent
judicial system. Iraqis now have a right to a fair, expeditious and open
trial, the right to defense counsel at all stages of the proceedings, and
the right to remain silent. The use of torture on civilians has been
abolished.
There is a new Bill of Rights, which is even more inclusive than that of the
U.S. It includes the freedom of religious belief and practice, and the
rights to free expression, to peacefully assemble, to organize political
parties, and to organize and form unions.
Twenty-five hundred of the 12,000 schools needing repairs have been
renovated; 869 are currently under construction. The salaries of teachers
have been more than doubled. The curriculum has been revised, Baath party
officials fired and tens of thousands of new teachers trained. Fifty-nine
million new textbooks have been supplied by the United States and the UN Oil
for Food program. USAID officials edited schoolbooks to include Shia history
and culture, which was hitherto excluded.
Doctors' salaries have gone from an average of US$20 per month to a minimum
of US$120 per month. Thirty million doses of children's vaccinations have
been distributed. In 2002, Saddam's budget for his Ministry of Health was
US$16-million; today, it is US$948-million. The health care system is now
open to all Iraqis, with 30% more using it than before. Half the medical
schools now have Internet access, with the rest planned to be up and running
by the end of the summer. Saddam had isolated his medical community for 35
years; 52 primary health care clinics have been renovated and 600 have since
been substantially re-equipped.
Three-hundred -and-forty-thousand people now have cell phones, increasing by
15,000 each month. Iraqis can now make international calls. By summer, the
average Iraqi will have 16 hours of electricity per day, a 40% increase from
pre-war levels. USAID is building three sewage treatment plants (there were
none), and their water and sanitation projects will benefit 14.5 million
Iraqis. Pre-war, only 50-60% had clean water.
A hundred thousand American kids in their 20s and 30s from Omaha, Nebraska
and Eugene, Oregon are doing this work, and when they come home, they will
rightly love and respect their country more than we Canadians can even
imagine. Contrast this with our supra-national humanist elites safely
inhabiting their socio-cultural bubble, who encourage anti-American hatred
at every opportunity and would casually write off 24 million people, just to
give America a black eye. What have they done but endlessly complain?
In every country in the Middle East and in southeast Asia, and in most
countries in Africa, prisoner abuse is so much worse than what happened at
Abu Ghraib that there is literally no basis for comparison. And there are
millions in those prisons, where the international Red Cross, Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch are never allowed. Contrast this to the
thousand or so terrorist suspects, whose treatment is subject to constant
scrutiny, criticism and "outing" by the international press and various
NGOs. Contrast the mandated 25% of seats for women in the new Iraqi
Parliament with the Turkish father who, last week, ritually strangled his
daughter with piano wire because she had been raped.
And then there's Iraq. Did al-Jazeera complain while Saddam killed 300,000
of his own citizens and buried them in unmarked mass graves? Was there
endless coverage of the insane tortures he perpetuated? Any videos of Saddam
feeding Iraqis into wood chippers feet-first? Were there publicly televised
shamings of his defense secretary, or the defense secretary who oversaw the
massacres in Kashmir or East Timor? I don't think so.
My father stopped some of his men from shooting German prisoners in the days
after the landing at Juno Beach. War is hell, s--t happens. It doesn't make
it right, but it's the photos of the almost 800 young American men and women
who have given their lives for a free Iraq that really move me. Time for us
all to grow up, and recognize America for what it has, under George W. Bush,
become: the hope of the world.
Anti-Americanism entered the first pangs of its death throes this week with
the continued showing of the prison photos. The national mourning, the
hearings, the shock, self-flagellation and guilt, punctuated by civilian
Nicholas Berg's beheading -- the whole thing became so serious that we
finally all got bolted out of our smug complacency and started to make,
arguably for the first time, the strict adult calculations of right and
wrong. The chattering of the chattering classes was, just for that moment,
stilled, and then it switched courses in mid-stream and some began to
support the country, rather than continuing to parrot the lazy evil
platitudes of Edward Said. And finally, the extraordinary sacrifice of those
kids over there in Iraq, those kids from the Red States, where Tina Brown,
Sidney Blumenthal and Bob Woodward never go, began to be recognized as so
heroic and difficult, it defied belief. And the hopes of the whacko left for
another Vietnam were dashed.
Why? Let's look at just what the Americans have done in the last year and
two months (without Canada). They have freed 24-million people from what was
reasonably described as one giant 36-year-long Gulag. Thirty-five percent of
Iraqi households now have satellite dishes and there are 120 free
newspapers, some sharply critical of the Coalition, most promoting democracy
and encouraging debate. Only two which recommended violence against the
Coalition have been shut down, one for only 60 days. Iraqis now have free
use of the Internet, and Internet cafes litter Baghdad. There are 30 Iraqi
blogs in Baghdad alone. All would have been killed under Saddam, users and
producers.
Six hundred judges are working in a fully functioning and independent
judicial system. Iraqis now have a right to a fair, expeditious and open
trial, the right to defense counsel at all stages of the proceedings, and
the right to remain silent. The use of torture on civilians has been
abolished.
There is a new Bill of Rights, which is even more inclusive than that of the
U.S. It includes the freedom of religious belief and practice, and the
rights to free expression, to peacefully assemble, to organize political
parties, and to organize and form unions.
Twenty-five hundred of the 12,000 schools needing repairs have been
renovated; 869 are currently under construction. The salaries of teachers
have been more than doubled. The curriculum has been revised, Baath party
officials fired and tens of thousands of new teachers trained. Fifty-nine
million new textbooks have been supplied by the United States and the UN Oil
for Food program. USAID officials edited schoolbooks to include Shia history
and culture, which was hitherto excluded.
Doctors' salaries have gone from an average of US$20 per month to a minimum
of US$120 per month. Thirty million doses of children's vaccinations have
been distributed. In 2002, Saddam's budget for his Ministry of Health was
US$16-million; today, it is US$948-million. The health care system is now
open to all Iraqis, with 30% more using it than before. Half the medical
schools now have Internet access, with the rest planned to be up and running
by the end of the summer. Saddam had isolated his medical community for 35
years; 52 primary health care clinics have been renovated and 600 have since
been substantially re-equipped.
Three-hundred -and-forty-thousand people now have cell phones, increasing by
15,000 each month. Iraqis can now make international calls. By summer, the
average Iraqi will have 16 hours of electricity per day, a 40% increase from
pre-war levels. USAID is building three sewage treatment plants (there were
none), and their water and sanitation projects will benefit 14.5 million
Iraqis. Pre-war, only 50-60% had clean water.
A hundred thousand American kids in their 20s and 30s from Omaha, Nebraska
and Eugene, Oregon are doing this work, and when they come home, they will
rightly love and respect their country more than we Canadians can even
imagine. Contrast this with our supra-national humanist elites safely
inhabiting their socio-cultural bubble, who encourage anti-American hatred
at every opportunity and would casually write off 24 million people, just to
give America a black eye. What have they done but endlessly complain?
In every country in the Middle East and in southeast Asia, and in most
countries in Africa, prisoner abuse is so much worse than what happened at
Abu Ghraib that there is literally no basis for comparison. And there are
millions in those prisons, where the international Red Cross, Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch are never allowed. Contrast this to the
thousand or so terrorist suspects, whose treatment is subject to constant
scrutiny, criticism and "outing" by the international press and various
NGOs. Contrast the mandated 25% of seats for women in the new Iraqi
Parliament with the Turkish father who, last week, ritually strangled his
daughter with piano wire because she had been raped.
And then there's Iraq. Did al-Jazeera complain while Saddam killed 300,000
of his own citizens and buried them in unmarked mass graves? Was there
endless coverage of the insane tortures he perpetuated? Any videos of Saddam
feeding Iraqis into wood chippers feet-first? Were there publicly televised
shamings of his defense secretary, or the defense secretary who oversaw the
massacres in Kashmir or East Timor? I don't think so.
My father stopped some of his men from shooting German prisoners in the days
after the landing at Juno Beach. War is hell, s--t happens. It doesn't make
it right, but it's the photos of the almost 800 young American men and women
who have given their lives for a free Iraq that really move me. Time for us
all to grow up, and recognize America for what it has, under George W. Bush,
become: the hope of the world.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 12:20 pm (UTC)http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/comment/story.html?id=db14ab47-e6d6-40d2-b92b-039923bb393f
no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 12:26 pm (UTC)http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/accomplishments/
My question is: How does building schools and sending out textbooks help children if they have trouble getting to school because they are in a war zone?
I'm not sure how building infrastructure helps people in a war zone to some degree when whatever has just been built is subject to sabotage or collateral damage.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 04:12 pm (UTC)The import of the prison abuse scandal is mainly that it has stripped the coalition of its pretense of legitimacy for building a new government that would reshape the politics of the region. That was the true goal of the people who started this war, and up until the beginning of this year it may still have been possible. But just as many of us predicted before they even went to war, they would mess up the effort and fail, and that's where we've reached now. It is no longer possible for anyone who is seen to be friendly to the US to build a stable and effective government in Iraq that does any of the things the American right wanted it to (be pro-Western, build in oil pipeline to Haifa, model democracy for its neighbors, etc.) Since that was the goal of the war, this is defeat. No amount of self-serving debate in op-ed columns here can change that anymore. We lost the war.
In 1982, Israel invated Lebanon, ostensibly to rid south Lebanon of a PLO army that was attacking Israel (which was really happening), using as provocation the assasination of an Israeli diplomat in Europe (in fact, the assasination was carried out by opponents of the PLO), but the real reason for the war was Ariel Sharon's fantasy of "saving" Lebanon from its dysfunctional politics and installing a new government that would be Democratic and pro-Western, make peace with Israel, and reshape the politics of the Middle East. Sharon bamboozled an unwitting Israel into thinking the invasion was necessary, and occupied Beirut. Although there was no real legitimacy for the Israeli attempt to reshape Lebanon, some foreign countries and some local forces were willing to give it a chance, warily - to see if this would result in a stable government for Lebanon. Then came Sabra and Shatilla, and that little pretense of legitimacy was gone forever. Gemayel was never going to fulfill all the promises Sharon believed he would, any more than Chalabi was going to do all the things Cheney and Rumsfeld were duped into counting on. But his chance to govern successfully in any case, also went up in fire.
We have just had our Sabra and Shatilla, in Abu Ghraib.
Afterwards, Israelis demonstrated in huge numbers, and defense minister Sharon was forced to resign. Sure, that says something good about Israel, but as far as Lebanon goes, it made no difference.
Does this writer think we Americans will go so far as to gather in huge numbes on the mall to demand Rumsfeld's resignation, and that Rumsfeld will go? I hope that happens. But as far as Iraq goes, it won't matter. We've defeated ourselves already, and there's no way back.
State of Iraq
Date: 2004-05-15 07:53 pm (UTC)Under Saddam, players on national sports teams who lost a match could get executed for it. Money from the "oil for food" program was used to build a mosque to glorify the great leader Saddam who had won the first gulf war by defeating the American armies. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed and tortured. Prisoners at the abu ghirab prison were executed by being pushed feet first into a wood chipper so that they had a few seconds to watch bits of their flesh and bone flying out the other end before they mercifly died.
And under the new administration of the prison, some prisoners were photographed naked, or with womens underwear on their head. This is far, far, worse, because we can blame it on Bush and score some cheap points for the next election, and promise that under a democrat, we will immediately cause all Iraqis to love us by, um, er, well, we've got a seekrit plan somewhere. Trust us.
This is from the party which claims to support gay rights, but whose leaders are opposing gay marriage now that polls show a majority of americans against it, because the votes they will get are more important than the moral issues involved. Even in happy Mass, controlled by the democrats since the begining of time, gays will be able to marry tomorrow, but they still can't legally have sex. This is from the party that claims to be environmentally friendly, but in Massachusetts they oppose wind power, because a proposed windmill might be visible on a clear day from the kennedy compound, and property values might go down. This is from the party whose leader condemmed his opponent for not taking government campaign funding, a full week before he made the same decision. This is from the party that decided when the war started that they'd do everything in their power to make America lose, because another Vietnam might get them elected.
Yes, life is better for a lot of Iraqis under the new system than under the old, if you look at little things like power, water, human rights, all those little details. But talking about how eeeeeevil Bush is might get Kerry some votes in the election, so it behooves you to tell everyone how US troops shooting at snipers is worse than Saddam using chemical weapons on the kurds. And just look at that constitution that we forced on them. Decreeing that they should respect women's rights is so much worse than embezzling oil-for-food money to starve the people. And building schools? Pshaw, under saddam, you got government money going to a mosque whose minarets were shaped like AK-47s! It's like stata, but worse!
Re: State of Iraq
Date: 2004-05-15 08:22 pm (UTC)Re: State of Iraq
Date: 2004-05-16 07:33 am (UTC)And, can you back up your assertion that the Democrats decided they would do anything in their power to make the US lose in Iraq? It's one thing to vote Republican; it's quite another to accuse the opposing party of treason with no factual citations whatsoever.
Re: State of Iraq
Date: 2004-05-18 06:40 pm (UTC)In light of that, your entire rant seems ironic to me. You're indulging in exactly the practice you supposedly are railing against, and you don't seem to notice it.