Arthur Chrenkoff begins his periodic OpinionJournal Iraq good news roundup (also here and here) with,
“You can’t fix in six months what it took 35 years to destroy.” These words, spoken by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Iraq’s first democratically elected Prime Minister in half a century, should be inscribed in 3-foot-tall characters as a preface to all the reporting from Iraq. Sadly, the underlying reality all too often seems to escape many reporters caught in the excitement of “now.”
True enough. Of course, it’s actually much harder than even that: Iraq wasn’t exactly an economically thriving democracy 35 years ago, either.
