Contrary to media's coverage, there is steady progress in Iraq

Judging by the media's daily dirge of bad news and ominous prophecy about Iraq, we might conclude that the war against Saddam Hussein has been a foreign policy failure. The cover of Newsweek, the AP Wire and the Daily Princetonian all seem to repeat the same message: The Iraqis hate us, and our troops are writhing in a sandy purgatory.

Only it is not true. We are not losing in Iraq. We are making steady progress. Unreasonably high expectations formed in the early days of the war. We need to accept that a war against terrorism will be painful, and that propaganda-reinforced ideologies are hard to break. By any reasonable measure the Coalition effort is going well. Iraq is getting back to its feet, and there are tangible reasons to expect the defeat of the fundamentalist and Baathist guerrilla campaign. The real question is whether the American public can sustain the will to stay in Iraq despite the chorus of despair.

On their way into Iraq, our forces won one of the fastest and cleanest victories in the history of war. They toppled a dictator who had sponsored terrorist attacks abroad, and genocide at home. They decisively planted American power in the heart of the Middle East. Now, coalition troops lead the physical and political rebuilding of Iraq.

It is rare to hear this narrative from the media, which inevitably prefers to report a crashed helicopter to a reopened school, or a dead American to a pit full of Shiites murdered by Saddam's thugs. As with the local news, so too with CNN: If it bleeds, it leads. Bad new sells better. But raw bias has been at work as well. News reports refer to the Baathist and Al-Qaeda remnants as "resistance fighters," "militants" and "guerrillas," but almost never as "terrorists." The BBC is just one example. The network, which refuses to call suicide bombers "terrorists," sparked such an outcry against its anti-American and anti-Israeli bias that it was forced this week to appoint a watchdog to guard against biased Middle East reporting.

It is not surprising, then, that the efforts of leaders like Princeton's own David H. Petraeus, MPA '85, PhD '87 to help Iraqis move towards a free society receive so little attention. At least 60,000 thousand Iraqi police have been deployed and a new Iraqi army is training alongside American troops. Schools have been reopened, Iraq is developing a real judiciary system with Iraqi judges, services are being restored, and oil — the lifeblood of Iraq's economy — is flowing again. Iraqis are starting their own businesses — a great sign for the future development of the middle class crucial to democracy. This week's Washington Post ran an unusually positive story on the reawakening of the Iraqi cement industry. All in all, the country is much better off than it was a mere two or three months ago. Yet these important developments are always among the little stories, relegated to back pages, "more news" links on the Internet, and press releases.

The death or injury of Coalition soldiers is always a tragedy, but despite the bloodshed, it would be a mistake to think American troops are dying in vain. Armed resistance is principally restricted to those who benefited most from the dictatorship: members of Saddam's tribe and elsewhere in the minority "Sunni Triangle" that stretches from Baghdad north to Tikrit. Along with al-Qaida elements, these terrorists have done some very savage and some very dumb things. They target not only American troops, but also Iraqi civilians and aid workers who are working to assure Iraq's future.

A series of Gallup polls conducted this fall suggest that the Iraqi people know their friends from their enemies. Asked whether Coalition forces should leave Baghdad in the next six months or stay longer, 72 percent of respondents wanted them to stay longer. Sixty-four percent of Baghdadis agreed that attacks on U.S. troops were unjustifiable. A 62 percent majority said the ouster of Saddam Hussein was worth the ensuing hardships. Finally, of various options, 40 percent of Baghdadis said they would prefer a multiparty parliamentary democracy, compared to a mere 10 percent wanted to see an Islamic theocracy.

These numbers, fragmentary though they may be, are all the more encouraging as they come from the heart of Saddam's regime. They also offer us a partial glimpse into the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, within which the war will be won or lost. An insurgency can only succeed by winning popular support. By targeting the United Nations, the Red Cross and humanitarian organizations, Iraq's terrorist resistance are setting themselves up to lose it.

Are there problems ahead in Iraq? Certainly. Building a democracy in place of a "republic of fear" is no small undertaking. But to think that America is losing, is to fail to place the news in its proper perspective. The war will be a "long hard slog" as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has warned, but there are many reasons to be hopeful. With American perseverance, a free society will blossom in Iraq.

Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky is a Wilson School major from New York, N.Y.