Donald Rumsfeld has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about Iraq and the Media. It's a transcript of his speech for Monday at Johns Hopkins.
63% of people in the news media thought the enterprise would fail. So did 71% of people in the foreign affairs establishment and 71% in academic settings or think tanks. Interestingly, opinion leaders from the U.S. military are optimistic about Iraq by a margin of 64% to 32%. And so is the American public, by a margin of 56% to 37%.
Which view of Iraq is more accurate? The pessimistic view of so-called elites in our country--or the optimism expressed by millions of Iraqis and by the roughly 158,000 troops on the ground? But, most important is the question: why should Iraq's success or failure matter to the American people? I'd like to address these questions today.
Like everything the real Donald does, it's not rah-rah, but rather a fair assessment of the good and bad in Iraq. The Bad:
* Bursts of violence, including continued assassinations and attempts to intimidate Iraqi leaders and those supporting the legitimate Iraqi government.
* Continuing U.S. and Iraqi casualties.
* Iran and Syria continue to be notably unhelpful.
The Good:
* The political process is on schedule. Iraqis have a Constitution they wrote and voted for, and hundreds of candidates are politicking for the elections.
* There seem to be growing divisions among the enemies of the Iraqi people, particularly after the bombing of a wedding reception in Amman, Jordan.
* More of Iraq's neighbors now seem to believe this new democracy might succeed and are moving to get right with the Iraqi people by being more active in their support.
* A vital and engaged media is emerging, with some 100 newspapers, 72 radio stations, and 44 television stations.
* Sunnis are increasingly taking part in the political process, further isolating those who still oppose the legitimate Iraqi government.
Perhaps he reads the Opinionated Bastard, because he's trying to define the victory conditions:
To be responsible, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks. As Sen. Joe Lieberman recently suggested, a better measure of success might be that a vast majority of Iraqis--tens of millions--are on the side of the democratic government, while a comparatively small number are opposed. This gives the Iraqi people an enormous advantage over time.
Anyways, read the whole thing.
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