Today's early-morning preview of ticker headlines was again buttonholed by a reference to a "wave of violence" in Iraq, which in turn led to a story headlining the "surge of violence" in the democratizing country. As Wretchard would insist, the "violence" is not a remote phenomenon but in fact attempts on the lives of the innocent and those who protect them. Austin Bay has fit research to the observation that terrorist mayhem in Iraq increasingly devolves into feckless, if compulsive and deadly, gangsterdom. A look at today's hit-jobs trace the same pattern: a trio of car bombs directed at policemen, succeeding in the crumpling of a building and the death and injury of several people who happened on the scene at the wrong moment. Tragic for those affected, yes; but the events fail to describe conditions in the country, and hardly rise to the one-sided hyperbole that is now standard to elite media narratives. Accuracy would be served if news agencies collected additional, reasonably available information and published stories on how a series of attacks by thugs on weak targets, say, failed to disrupt the lives and businesses of millions of Iraqis, thousands of Allied troops and hundreds of public works projects.
It used to be that anecdote defined what was found outside of the newspaper, judged to be a worthy arbiter of representative fact. Baghdad, the stories tell us, strains under the wailing terrorist strikes. Omar and his brothers would sternly disagree, and the online photo album to which they linked begs retraction of the dire claims. We don't see strange, alien rituals in a savage landscape. Are even the bums prey for a politicized obsession with catastrophe?
Iraq's challenges must be recognized, lest the Allies' necessity and the serious danger in remaining terrorist regimes — particularly those couched in Tehran and Damascus — be cheapened. But what of the nation's progress? While terrorists succeed in beaming feeds of compressed disaster directly to Washington they fail to sell the conjured impression to Iraqis or their colleagues. Police, often physically undermatched, are culturally central and when attacked add, rather than subtract, to self-confidence. One building is sabotaged, a dozen more are raised. It is evident and abundant:
Last month, 31 schools were completed, with 10 of those in the Samarra District. April projections are for another 44 schools to be completed. The renovation projects in Salah ad Din will positively affect over 13,000 Iraqi students and boost the local economy in the form of labor, materials, and subcontracts. The use of local contractors and local labor has been instrumental in inspiring pride in the local communities and injecting money into the local economies....As March ended, 89 projects completed within the Gulf Region Northern District, which includes the seven northern provinces of Dahok, Diyala, Erbil, Kirkuk, Ninewa, Salah ad Din and Sulaymaniyah. Currently there are more than 475 projects in progress, with over 180 projects forecast completed, and 99 projects forecast to begin this month.
Iraq can survive poor press. Will the press survive Iraq?