The other day I posted on one of my news forum haunts about an article in the Chicago Tribune. The article was about life returning to normal in Baghdad since the "Surge." Not surprising, I got the usual negative comments from the usual suspects about how meaningless the good news really is. A few examples:
- "...a large part is due to completion of an initiative to segregate Sunnis and Shia in walled off and gated neighborhoods or districts"
- "Baghdad is a very small part of a very large nation."
- "Progress?? Some headway toward a problem that was a direct result of poor planning by the Bush admin and I'm supposed to call it progress??"
- "Unfortunately, the bad seems to outweigh the good with this 'war.'"
But as one of the few posters who consider the news good said:
"Democrats who pronounced the war lost are in a tough spot."
That's certainly true; not that all Democrats call the war lost, but a few have. Now the New York Times—certainly not a paper to hold a pro-war or a pro-surge view in the past—is conceding to success, and a lot of it at that. But then consider, once the handwriting is on the wall it is not a good idea to keep ones head in the sand either; not if one wants to avoid that "tough spot."
This isn't just one article, or two in the Times, but six (count them six), articles by three different authors. These articles each look at a different aspect of Iraqi life that has recently returned to normal. (just short excerpts so read the articles)
Weddings:
These days, marriages are back, in public and in some cases, after dark. Mr. Muhammad's shop has reopened. And at a photo studio in western Baghdad recently, three young happy couples appeared for portraits, arriving with an entourage and bands in tow. The brides and grooms ascended a long line of stairs to get their pictures taken in front of landscapes depicting pastoral gardens, sunsets or even an American-style suburban home with a white picket fence.
....
None perhaps were happier than Rifaat al-Haliji, 32, one of the bandleaders who arrived with a couple from Allawi, a neighborhood close by. After Ramadan ended last month, he said that business started to increase.
"We were stuck out of work for seven months," he said. Now, he added, "we do five weddings a week."
Restaurants:
Now things are a little better. Customer come at 4 p.m. and leave at 11 p.m.
"You be the judge," said one cook, Ali Abu Hussain.
A few hundred yards north on a sealed-off stretch of the riverbank a dozen long-closed restaurants stand poised to reopen. Owners refurbished the dilapidated cafes using American dollars pumped into what American and Iraqi officials trumpeted as a showpiece renovation of the city's historic Abu Nawas Boulevard.
Zawra Park:
"Gardens are the paradise of God on earth," reads the sign welcoming an ever-growing but still cautious group of pleasure-seekers visiting Baghdad's largest public park, beside the Green Zone. Beneath trees and models of traditional Marsh Arab and Bedouin homes, picnicking families sit in clusters chatting and sipping Alpha Cola, against a backdrop of police sirens and shots from outside -- some perhaps in anger, but mostly armored Blackwater-style convoys forcing their way through traffic jams. Some families are here for the first time in years.
Computer Street:
Some have trickled back to Baghdad after fleeing to Jordan or Syria. Others had no electricity in their homes to go online.
With the improvements in security, there is also increased demand for equipment. Customer numbers are up 20 percent for Nazar Nazaryan, a laser printing specialist, with much of the demand coming from government ministries.
Theater:
The entire room rose in a wave to sing: "My country, my country, glory and beauty and delight is in your land. Safety, prosperity and hope is in your air."
There was no curtain, no set beyond a chair, a long rope and an Iraqi flag, which would soon be used as a shroud. But the piece, written and performed by students at Baghdad's Fine Arts Institute and sponsored by the Young People Union, an allegory with more mime than words, needed no more to be understood.
A painter smiles as he depicts all that is beautiful in Iraq; a small singing bird keeps him company until bombs begin to fall. The painter drops his brush and cowers, the bird flies away. People die in the street. An Iraqi politician in a snazzy suit appears. He is tied by a long rope to a man dressed in an American military uniform. The painter weeps as he watches the politician raise his arms like a marionette when the American tugs at him. Iraqis, tribal sheiks and workmen, painters and bodyguards, attack one another with cardboard daggers and guns.
Liquor Store:
On Thursday evenings now, before the Muslim holy day, men in long white garments and tribal head scarfs squeeze elbow to elbow with men in western T-shirts to scrutinize the shelves of dark shops lined with bottles of cheap whiskey, Dutch beer and Turkish arak.
They walk away now their heads held high, swinging their purchases in plastic bags. On a recent evening several men crowded near a small shop that was little more than a large pair of shutters halfway up the wall of a house. The shopkeepers leaned out the window and passed bottles across the ledge to waiting customers.
Such a scene would not have occurred even four months ago. Both the Shiite Mahdi militia, with ties to anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and extremist Sunni groups viewed liquor as a sin and bombed stores that sold it and threatened the owners. Christians were most often the victims since they owned the majority of liquor shops -- there is no prohibition on selling alcohol in Christian teaching, although some Christian groups eschew it.
Tell me again now how bad life really is in Iraq.
Via Dean's World, thanks Dean.
The Treasury study examined a huge sample of 96,700 income tax returns from 1996 and 2005 for Americans over the age of 25. The study tracks what happened to these tax filers over this 10-year period. One of the notable, and reassuring, findings is that nearly 58% of filers who were in the poorest income group in 1996 had moved into a higher income category by 2005. Nearly 25% jumped into the middle or upper-middle income groups, and 5.3% made it all the way to the highest quintile.
