From Mr Bolt, Iraq Has Been Won

THERE is a reason Iraq has almost disappeared as an election issue. Here it is: The battle is actually over. Iraq has been won.

I know this will seem to many of you an insane claim. Ridiculous!

After all, haven’t you read countless stories that Iraq is a “disaster”, turned by a “civil war” into a “killing field”?

Didn’t Labor leader Kevin Rudd, in one of his few campaign references to Iraq, say it was the “greatest . . . national security policy disaster that our country has seen since Vietnam”?

You have. And you have been misled.

Here is just the latest underreported news, out this week.

Just 27 American soldiers were killed in action in Iraq in October—the lowest monthly figure since March last year. (This is a provisional figure and may alter over the next week.)

The number of Iraqi civilians killed last month—mostly by Islamist and fascist terrorists—was around 760, according to Iraqi Government sources. That is still tragically high, but the monthly toll has plummeted since January’s grim total of 1990.

What measures of success do critics of Iraq’s liberation now demand?

Violence is falling fast. Al Qaida has been crippled. The Shiites, Kurds and Marsh Arabs no longer face genocide.

What’s more, the country has stayed unified. The majority now rules. Despite that, minority Sunni leaders are co-operating in government with Shiite ones. There is no civil war. The Kurds have not broken away. Iran has not turned Iraq into its puppet.

And the country’s institutions are getting stronger. The Iraqi army is now at full strength, at least in numbers. The country has a vigorous media. A democratic constitution has been adopted and backed by a popular vote. Election after election has Iraqis turning up in their millions.

Add it all up. Iraq not only remains a democracy, but shows no sign of collapse. I repeat: the battle for a free Iraq has been won.

Now the task is one familiar to every democracy, and especially any in the Middle East: eternal vigilance.

If you doubt my assessment of Iraq, ask Osama bin Laden.

Al-Qaida’s media arm last week released a video on the internet in which bin Laden—or a man masquerading as him—revealed how disastrously his war against democracy in Iraq was going.

He called for intensified fighting against the Americans and pleaded for Muslims in the region to come help.

“Where are the soldiers of the Levant and the reinforcements from Yemen?” he demanded. “Where are the knights of Egypt and the lions of Hejaz (in Saudi Arabia)? Come to the aid of your brothers in Iraq.”

Bin Laden even let slip how badly al-Qaida has been mauled by the Sunni sheiks who have stopped fighting the US troops and turned on bin Laden’s killers instead, by pleading for “unity” from the Sunnis and admitting “mistakes” had been made.

Take that as an admission of defeat for the terrorists, and a sign of victory for Iraq and its liberators.

To talk like this will, I know, choke many critics of the war with fury.

How angry so many are to hear good news from Iraq. And how suspicious is their reaction. Don’t we all actually wish for Iraq to be democratic, safe and free from tyranny?

But, they’ll splutter, but, but, but . . .

I can hear them already.

But the bloodshed in Iraq is terrible! Call that victory?

And, yes, the killings are ghastly. Iraq is nowhere near safe, and our help is still needed to make it so. Yet the violence now does not threaten the country or its government.

Go back to the days when American forces were fighting Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi army for control of Najaf, or al-Qaida and its allies for Fallujah.

Such battles for territory are over. Al-Sadr has maintained a ceasefire for more than two years, and is even part of Iraq’s Government. American troops are now based in his Shiite heartland of Sadr City, and no Iraqi city is now under terrorist control as Fallujah once was. “Insurgents” rule nowhere.

But we went to war on a lie!

Actually, we went to war to free Iraq from a tyrant who had used weapons of mass destruction, and would not guarantee he would not do so again. No lie. Job done.

In any case, whatever you may think of the arguments put in 2003, the argument today is whether Iraq will survive as a democracy, and whether we should help it. The answers must be yes, and yes. Mustn’t they? Hello?

But if Iraq is “won”, why are so many Iraqis still dying?
Because some of the killers are just criminals, or are trying to kill their way to a piece of the action, or are—inevitably after so much cruelty and oppression—settling scores.

Others are agents of Iran, which wants to make America pay and Iraq obey. And more—and the worst—are fanatics who just want to kill for their creed, and are killing Iraqis as they are killing Pakistanis, Algerians, Egyptians, Israelis and anyone else in the way of their jihad.

Iraq remains an ugly place, with lethal hatreds, yet none of these killers are winning and Iraq will not fall to them.

Consider: Iraq’s official estimate of civilian deaths from violence is now about 25 a day. In South Africa, with twice the population, the official murder toll is 52 a day. That’s a rate of killing equal to Iraq’s.

Do you think those murders will topple South Africa? And does anyone say of South Africa that these killings just prove freedom was not worth it?

But how can you call this winning when Iraq’s power supply is terrible, its police untrustworthy, its regions divided over how to share oil revenues, and its borders threatened by Turkey, which wants to hit back at Kurdish terrorists encamped in Iraq’s north?

True, Iraq has plenty of problems. Which Arab country does not? But it will solve them better without Saddam than with. And perfection is nowhere.

But, but, but . . . but it wasn’t worth it! See how many died!

And here is the only objection that can be made with integrity.

Yes, people have died, mainly at the hands of fellow Muslims. How many, no one knows. Perhaps 100,000 since the war in 2003? More?

A ghastly loss, and thank God the killings are at last dwindling.

But Iraq was no Eden under Saddam. If the deaths today are bad, the misery before was worse. As, of course, was the threat.

The battle for Iraq always involved a grim calculus: would liberation save more people than it killed?

So let’s calculate how many died under Saddam. In 1980, the dictator invaded Iran, starting a war in which at least 500,000 people died. In 1987, he crushed the Kurds, killing perhaps 100,000 or more. In 1990, he invaded Kuwait, starting a war that killed more than 23,000. On his defeat, he killed some 100,000 Shiites who rebelled.

Add the mass executions he ordered, the purges he unleashed, the opposition activists he shot, the terrorist attacks he paid for. Remember also the children who died, robbed of medicines by his regime.

Add them all up, and even by the most conservative count you see Saddam did not just threaten the West, but cost the lives of more than 100 Muslims a day, every day, for the 24 years of his barbaric rule.

That’s four times more than are being killed in Iraq today, often by Saddam’s heirs and Saddam’s like.

Was Iraq worth it? Yes. It stands, it stays, and the winning of Iraq was worth it, indeed.
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Editor's note.
Of course, this victory can be thrown away by any of many populist measures taken by those who apparently endorsed the old regime. But the story is comforting.