If you look dispassionately at the events of the last few months – even the last few bloody weeks in Iraq – you can see why. In several major theaters of war, the West has made enormous progress. The Taliban no longer exist as a regime and al Qaeda has been damaged severely. One of the most destabilizing forces in the Middle East – the disintegrating regime of Saddam Hussein – has been removed. The most aggressive terror-state of the previous two decades, Libya, has come in from the cold. The younger generation in Iran is risking their lives and limbs for change.
And the possibility of a representative, pluralist government in a critical Arab state is now in reach for the first time – and that possibility offers the only, yes, the only, chance for real and lasting progress against the forces of Islamo-fascism. All the news out of Iraq these past couple of weeks has been hyped into a message of despair. But in fact, something quite remarkable has occurred. The most dangerous representative of Islamicist theocracy in Iraq, Moqtadr al Sadr, facing the prospect of a moderate government, decided to play his only card and seize power by force. He was routed by American forces and isolated by moderate Shiites. He has now essentially surrendered any possibility of future power in the new Iraq and will be lucky not to be in prison before too long. Meanwhile, the Sunni Baathists remnants, joined by a variety of terrorists from around the region, stepped up their assaults in the city of Fallujah. They tried to piggy-back on al Sadr’s revolt to create the appearance of chaos and precipitate an American withdrawal.
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And that, of course, was the week’s coup de grace. Bin Laden offered a truce. And who offers truces? People who are losing the battle. The reason Bush and Blair are still together is that they can see the distant, still perilous, but tangible prospect across the horizon. It may take many more setbacks. It may not prevent future atrocities. But in the events of the last few weeks, they can begin to see that success is not impossible. It may even, if we keep our nerve, become a reality.
All hopeful signs, to be sure. The downsides are that 1) Osama is still around to make these announcements and 2) the establishment of a functioning democracy in Iraq is far from a foregone conclusion. The odds are, of course, greatly enhanced with Saddam in custody, but there are still many things that could go wrong.
