Anyhow, I crossposted yesterday's post, "It's the War, Stupid," there and got a quick reply by what may very well be one of only a handful of British fans of the occupation of Iraq.
It turns out that I should "cheer up" about the occupation and I'm just being needlessly pessimistic. To back up her claim, she cited a Guardian story about a busload of refugees returning to Baghdad. Never mind that the story's about 800 people returning and later goes on to reference over 1.5 million refugees in Syria alone, surely I could see that any change for the better was an improvement?
I came up with what I hope was a pretty decent analogy:
Imagine a patient with cancer. While in the hospital, the patient develops the flu. A couple days later, the patient shakes the flu. Is the patient getting better? No. These are two different conditions. Losing the flu doesn't make for a healthy patient -- you've still got the cancer to deal with. The patient is no better off than when they came into the hospital.
The cancer is the occupation in general and the violence that it generates. The flu was the violence spike following the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which set off a series of sectarian reprisals and counter attacks. That spike's winding down. Or seems to be, anyway.
And here's what that cancer looks like -- at least, from one perspective:
New York Times:
In a newly released survey, American journalists in Iraq give harrowing accounts of their work, with the great majority saying that colleagues have been kidnapped or killed and that most parts of Baghdad are too dangerous for them to visit.
[...]
Almost two-thirds of the respondents said that most or all of their street reporting was done by local citizens, yet 87 percent said that it was not safe for their Iraqi reporters to openly carry notebooks, cameras or anything else that identified them as journalists. Two-thirds of respondents said they worried that their reliance on local reporters -- including many with little or no background in journalism -- could produce inaccurate or incomplete news reports...
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