What has gone right in Iraq
Boston Globe

By Jeff Jacoby, 4/1/2004

WITH ALL the news coming out of the Middle East, here is a detail you might
have missed: A few weeks ago, the United Nations shut down the Ashrafi
refugee camp in southwestern Iran. For years Ashrafi had been the largest
facility in the world housing displaced Iraqis, tens of thousands of whom
had been driven from their homes by Saddam Hussein's brutality. But with
Saddam behind bars and his regime crushed, Iraqi exiles have been flocking
home. By mid-February the camp had literally emptied out. Now, the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees reports, "nothing remains of Ashrafi but rubble
and a few stones."

Refugees surging to Iraq? That isn't what the antiwar legions told us would
happen if George Bush made good on his vow to end Saddam's reign of terror.
Over and over they warned that a US invasion would trigger a humanitarian
cataclysm, including a flood of refugees from Iraq. This, for instance, was
Martin Sheen at a Los Angeles news conference a month before the war began:

"As the dogs of war slouch towards Baghdad, we need to be reminded that as
many as 2 million refugees could become a reality, as well as half a million
fatalities."

Writing on the left-wing website AlterNet last March, senior editor Tai
Moses expressed dread of the coming of a war that "could create more than a
million refugees." The BBC, citing a "confidential" UN document, predicted
that up to 500,000 Iraqis would be seriously injured during the first phase
of an American attack, while 1 million would flee the country and 2 million
more would be internally displaced -- all compounded by an "outbreak of
diseases in epidemic if not pandemic proportions." The Organization of the
Islamic Conference foresaw the "displacement of hundreds of thousands of
refugees," plus "total destruction and a humanitarian tragedy whose scale
cannot be predicted."

Wrong, every one of them, along with all the other doomsayers, Bush-haters,
"Not In Our Name" fanatics, and sundry "peace" activists who flooded the
streets and the airwaves to warn of onrushing disaster. How many have had
the integrity to admit that their visions of catastrophe were wildly off the
mark? Or that if they had gotten their way, the foremost killer of Muslims
alive today -- Saddam -- would still be torturing children before their
parents' eyes? Instead they chant, "Bush lied, people died," and seize on
every setback in Iraq as proof that they were right all along.

But they were wrong all along. Operation Iraqi Freedom stands as one of the
great humanitarian achievements of modern times. For all the Bush
administration's mistakes and miscalculations, for all the monumental
challenges that remain, Iraq is vastly better off today than it was before
the war.

And the Iraqi people know it.

In a nationwide survey conducted by Britain's Oxford Research International,
56 percent of Iraqis say their lives are better now than before the war;
only 19 percent say things are worse. Because of "Bush's war," Iraqis today
brim with optimism. Fully 71 percent expect their lives to be even better a
year from now; less than 7 percent say they'll be worse. Iraq today may just
be the most upbeat, forward-looking country in the Arab world.

With hard work and a little luck, it may soon be the best governed as well.
The interim constitution approved by the Iraqi Governing Council protects
freedom of speech and assembly, guarantees the right to privacy, ensures
equality for women, and subordinates the military to civilian control. It
is, hands down, the most progressive constitution in the Arab Middle East.

Nearly a year after the fall of Baghdad, Iraq is hugely improved.
Unemployment has been cut in half. Wages are climbing. The devastated
southern marshlands are being restored. More Iraqis own cars and telephones
than before Saddam was ousted. Some 2,500 schools have been rehabbed by the
US-headed coalition. Spending on health care has soared thirtyfold, and
millions of Iraqi children have been vaccinated. Iraqi athletes, no longer
terrorized by Saddam's sadistic son Uday, are training for the summer
Olympics in Greece.

Above all, Iraq's people are free. The horror and cruelty of the Saddam era
are gone forever. In the 12 months since the American and British troops
arrived, not one body has been added to a secret mass grave. Not one woman
has been raped on government orders. Not one dissident has been mauled to
death by trained killer dogs. Not one Kurdish village has been gassed.

Is everything rosy? Of course not. Could the transition to democracy still
fail? Yes. Do innocent victims continue to die in horrific terror attacks or
at the hands of lynch mobs like the one that dragged the corpses of four
Americans through the streets of Falluja yesterday? They do.

But none of that changes the bottom line: In the ancient land that America
liberated, life is more beautiful and hopeful than it has been in many
decades. Bush's foes may loudly deny it, but the refugees streaming homeward
know better.