Baghdad ledger checkpoints

Just under a year ago, Baghdad fell. A great day, or so you would think — especially after the idiotic predictions of how the city would be a new Stalingrad, with coalition troops fighting street to street for months on end.

But, instead of even a moment of sheepish embarrassment, all the experts — the United Nations, the French, the world’s media, the nongovernmental organizations and the left in general — simply galloped on to even more idiotic predictions of doom.

On April 12 last year, I wrote a column mocking the global naysayers’ latest Top 10 Quagmires Of The Week.

If it seems cruel to dredge them up, I do so because, the current ballyhoo from Democrats would make you think the administration policy in this area has been a disaster. It hasn’t. Indeed, for 2 years now, the naysayers to the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice approach to the war on terror have been close to 100 percent wrong on everything.

John Kerry, in his macho way, told Rolling Stone, apropos the Iraq war, that he never expected President Bush to f*** it up so much. In fact, Mr. Bush didn’t asterisk it up at all. It’s one of the least asterisked-up operations in history.

The freak-show left prancing around on the anniversary demonstrations is one thing, but sensible people of all persuasions ought to be able to give the administration real credit for it did in Iraq these last 12 months.

Here are 10 predictions of doom from the conventional wisdom of a year ago, followed by some of my comments at the time, and a note on how things have turned out:

(1) “Iraq’s slide into violent anarchy” (The Guardian, April 11, 2003). Say what you like about Saddam Hussein, but he ran a tight ship, and you didn’t have to nail down the furniture.

I predicted: “A year from now, Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs.”

One year on: Almost. According to the BBC, Basra is booming and its citizens are flush with new spending power. Despite Saddam’s decision to empty the prisons of petty criminals on the eve of the war, in February British authorities reported crime in the city has fallen by 70 percent.

(2) “The head of the World Food Program has warned that Iraq could spiral into a massive humanitarian disaster.” (The Australian, April 11, 2003)

One year on: No humanitarian disaster. Indeed, no “humanitarians.” The NGOs fled Iraq in August and nobody noticed, confirming what some of us have suspected since Afghanistan: The permanent floating crap game of the humanitarian lobby has a vastly inflated sense of its own importance and is prone to massive distortion in the cause of self-promotion.

(3) “Iraqis now waiting for Americans to leave.” (Associated Press, April 10, 2003)

I predicted: “There will be terrible acts of suicide-bomber depravity in the months ahead, but no widespread resentment at or resistance of the Western military presence.”

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