Editor-in-Chief of American Enterprise magazine Karl Zinsmeister, who has regularly visited Iraq since the deposition of Saddam Hussein to gauge Iraqi temperament, trajectory and progress was this morning's guest on Bill Bennett's Morning in America radio program. "It's still messed up," said Zinsmeister of Iraq, "but less so every time I go there." He noted remarkable changes having taken place over the past year. Baghdad's Sadr City, where the gangs of Iran-backed Muqtada al-Sadr harrassed Allied and Iraqi soldiers in April and August of 2004, the authorities' chief concerns today are traffic jams and water treatment. Haifa Street, the capital city's lethal Hogan's Alley, has been largely assumed by Iraqi security forces and in Zinsmeister's opinion "reclaimed," no small thanks to knowledge and insight impossible to foreigners. "Iraqis can pick out a man's Syrian accent instantly, and will ask him about his business, whereas Americans would just give him a 'Salam' and let him on his way."
Zinsmeister corroborates the observations of Iraqi fortitude found here and elsewhere: "the Iraqis are looking for a fight," he says, and while the enemy is increasingly confined to soft-target and indirect bombing operations Iraqis are angry, growing in confidence with every victory and more likely to be aggressive than politically compromised Americans and multinational soldiers. As Captain Duane Limpert, Jr. wrote in a recent letter home, "The main concern now among most Iraqis is not security, but jobs followed by basic services. Obviously, people are scared and concerned about safety, but they are less intimidated now." That in turn follows recent signs of democratic normalcy in the country.
What is critical to ensuring a very visibly approaching success? Here, all agree: American commitment.