Fiat Lux

Call me a pessimist. Call me gun-shy after watching Howard Dean go from hero to zero inside of a month. You may be right. But still, I’m a little concerned this day, wondering whether the tides are swinging in Kerry’s favor too soon.

As Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. points out,

How this election turns out will depend a great deal on how the situation in Iraq looks to voters on Election Day, and how many middle-class and blue-collar voters feel the economic recovery in their own lives by then.

The fact that Fahrenheit 9/11 did boffo box office not just in liberal enclaves, but nationwide, is a hopeful sign. Pollsters have been saying for some time now that the race is tight and could even be tipping in Kerry’s favor. But this is a dangerous time too.

People are not happy with the way the country is going right now, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to people thinking Kerry is the man to lead a change. Or so says the NY Times:

45 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Bush himself, again the most negative measure the Times/CBS Poll has found since he took office. And 57 percent say the country is going in the wrong direction, another measure used by pollsters as a barometer of discontent with an incumbent.

Yet the survey found little evidence that Mr. Kerry has been able to take advantage of the president’s difficulties, even though Mr. Kerry has spent $60 million on television advertising over the past three months.

My feeling is, it’s going to be a long slog to November, and the results are no means certain.

Enough teasing everyone that you know something the rest of us don’t about the forged Niger uranium documents.

If you’ve got the story, run with it. If you don’t, stop hinting that you do. In short, as the old saying goes, shit or get off the pot.

I have a hard time viewing the US transfer of power to Iraq and Bremer’s hasty departure as anything other than an admission that the situation is a big mess. I’m wondering how soon the current administration will start to spin it as a sign of success that they could hand over sovereignty two days early.

This article from the Washington Post is almost a week old but it’s well worth a read, especially if you read it alongside the excellent work Back to Iraq is doing.

The long and the short of it? It’s not just the radical anti-war Left or Iraqi extremists that think our invasion of Iraq has been a miserable failure.

The American occupation of Iraq will formally end this month having failed to fulfill many of its goals and stated promises intended to transform the country into a stable democracy, according to a detailed examination drawing upon interviews with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and internal documents of the occupation authority

There’s blame aplenty to go around. Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority blames the military. The military blames the CPA. The Iraqis blame us. We blame them. And around it goes. Then, another interesting fact.

Attacks on U.S.-led forces and foreign civilians now average more than 40 a day, a threefold increase since January.

Small wonder so-called “Green Zone,” where the CPA and related US personnel live, is a fortress that few set foot beyond unless they’re surrounded by security forces. And what are we getting for that attack rate, and for the 800+ American soldiers dead?

In an interview last week, Bremer maintained that “Iraq has been fundamentally changed for the better” by the occupation. The CPA, he said, has put Iraq on a path toward a democratic government and an open economy after more than three decades of a brutal socialist dictatorship. Among his biggest accomplishments, he said, were the lowering of Iraq’s tax rate, the liberalization of foreign-investment laws and the reduction of import duties.

Emphasis added.

Let me get this right. We invaded a country 3,000 miles away from us, one that posed no clear threat to America. The country is a mess – the Post article goes into great detail on that point. Just one of many examples is that even in Baghdad itself, electrical power is available only 9 hours out of 24. It seems likely that the new Iraqi government will impose martial law after the June 30 handover. To name just one potential keg of worms, nobody seems to have any idea how the Kurds and the Shiites are going to resolve their differences. And Paul Bremer thinks it’s an accomplishment that Iraqi taxes have been lowered.

Small wonder they hate us.

Tip of the hat to Fuzzy Puppy for the Post link.