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Tina Brown, praising Hillary Clinton in the Washington Post, comes very close to connecting the dots on Iraq:
Even reporters on the ground in Iraq could hardly believe what they were living through as they watched the power of an idea transmute into the living, breathing form of black-clad women, Marsh Arabs and throngs of Kurdish mountaineers festively making their way to the polls. The father of a young reporter who has spent most of the last two years in Iraq shared with me his son's e-mail from Baghdad. "We journalists are all sitting round and asking each other how we missed what's clearly a far deeper drive for political and societal change than we realized. It is a measure of our isolation here -- and also, I think, a measure of how the violence and humiliation of the occupation has masked people's very genuine feelings."The same is true of most Americans. Prof. Fouad Ajami, a Middle East expert, explains the phenomenon. "The election gave Americans the chance to bond with Iraqis again," he told me on the phone. "The problem has been that we didn't see enough gratitude from the Iraqis. We lost faith, and now suddenly Iraqis were doing this very American thing. They have recovered their country's dignity. America loves to see this kind of innocence. Who can be indifferent to the beauty and drama of Iraq's history?"
Apparently the above referenced folks don't read MilBlogs, which should even be available in finer Baghdad hotels. The countdown to the elections that ran here was actually making exactly this point about journalists being out of touch. Should that quoted journo wish to make the final leap, it's more accurate to say that the much feared terrorists kept most reporters from discovering that "far deeper drive for political and societal change" that Iraqis expressed so well - and so unsurprisingly - on election day.
But overall the piece reflects a positive trend - that of many opponents of the war beginning to evaluate their positions - perhaps their very concept of the world today. Little clues in the text, however, lead me to believe the result will be an opposition to progress in Iraq from a different direction. On the plus side, note the author's response to an email attempting to put the election success in a "positive" perspective for the left:
Sure enough, my first e-mail of the day was a copy of a mass mailing from a gloomy progressive brainiac that included a 1967 New York Times article headlined "U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote: Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror."
But in spite of the dismissive recounting of this episode, real progress won't come until the "Iraq is Vietnam" crowd is no longer labeled "progressive" without using scare quotes.
I might be guilty of nit-picking there, but read the final paragraph, which comes close to a rational conclusion, then veers wildly:
That's why among Democrats there's a lot of quiet soul-searching going on. Every Bush hater you meet in New York is engaged with an inner struggle of how much to let go of the past. They are like wives midway through marriage therapy designed to reconcile and foster a new beginning with a feckless husband who has perpetually let them down. Hillary Clinton knows what that feels like better than anyone else. Which is perhaps why she has the discipline to hang tough, befriend the enemy and leave revenge to the future.
"Leave revenge to the future" - what a fine way to mend fences.
Wonder how Bill feels about that?
(Another tip of the boonie hat to The Corner)
