In praise of good patriots and reasonable people

An illustration by Jon Kudelka Source: The Australian

It was a smart thing to say, for several reasons.

One, it's true. Obama himself has essentially followed Bush's policies on Iraq and Afghanistan, implementing in Afghanistan the same surge (under the same general, not incidentally) that Bush implemented to such good effect in Iraq. Although Obama is presenting his withdrawal of main US combat troops from Iraq, with 50,000 remaining, as keeping a promise, in fact the Democratic base is pretty unhappy with the way Obama has handled both Iraq and Afghanistan.

But there's no point being a smart alec about this. Obama deserves enormous credit for the pragmatic, steadfast and at times courageous way he has pursued both conflicts.

That's not to say he has done everything right but, when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, who has got everything right?

There's another reason Obama was smart to praise Bush. Bush is now more popular than Obama in those congressional districts that voted for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election but returned Democrat congressional representatives. As you can imagine, these are the districts that top the Republicans' attack list for the November mid-term congressional elections. Who would ever have thought Obama would want a little Bush gold dust to rub off on him?

Third, and very importantly, Obama wanted to give a unifying speech. As others have pointed out, Americans don't necessarily resolve their differences, they just move past them. Obama, absolutely correctly for a wartime president, wants to unite the nation behind him in the remaining tasks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And, finally, Iraq is starting to look as though it may turn out to be a great, historic American success. This success would be despite the opposition to the Iraq campaign at the time of the war by Obama and most Democrats, but Obama will certainly deserve great credit for the way he has conducted the campaign since he got to office.

Some statistics are enlightening here, and I take them from a David Brooks column this week in The New York Times. The International Monetary Fund says Iraq should have a budget surplus by 2012. This year it is, astonishingly, the 12th fastest growing economy in the world. Oil production is at pre-war levels and growing. Electricity production is 40 per cent higher than in pre-invasion days. There were 800,000 odd phones in Iraq before the invasion. Now there are more than 1.3 million land lines and 20 million mobiles. Before the invasion, fewer than 5000 Iraqis had access to the internet; now 1.7 million are connected.

I could go on, but you get the idea. The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Iraq fourth in the Middle East on political freedom, behind only Israel, Lebanon and Morocco.

The Americans have established, trained and partly financed a big enough Iraqi security sector to keep the peace and deal with remaining al-Qa'ida elements. Between the Iraqi army and police there are 600,000 personnel in the security sector.

One of the big mistakes early in Iraq was abolishing the Iraqi army, just as one of the big mistakes in Afghanistan was to establish an army that was much too small.

It goes without saying that there is a great deal of fragility in all this. Some of Iraq's neighbours, notably Iran, want its democracy to fail. Despite a democratic election, Iraq's politicians have not been able to form a new government. It could all collapse.

The only thing Obama said about Iraq that was perhaps ill-advised was that all American troops would be out of the country by the end of next year. There is a vast academic literature that shows that where sectarian conflict has subsided, the chances of avoiding recrudescent civil war are greatly enhanced if a big external power stays closely involved, mentoring and to some extent even adjudicating.

If, some time next year, the Iraqi government asked Washington to keep a residual force of, say, 30,000 as some kind of ultimate guarantee, it may well be smart to do so. But Obama has responded to all such questions with such deep common sense and pragmatism that he may well be flexible on this point, too. In the meantime he has to give the Democratic base, which hated this campaign, some consolation.

Two final points. The US has not lost credibility in Iraq or Afghanistan. After nearly 10 years in both countries, no other nation on earth could have mobilised these resources, made these sacrifices, spent this money in pursuit of both geo-strategic and idealistic goals.

Obama was very explicit: while ever he is president, "we will maintain the greatest fighting force the world has ever known".

Afghanistan and Iraq, even if both are finally tragically lost, actually underline the enormous strength and power and endurance of the US.

Altogether, many Americans, and all the US's critics, are too ready to see decline and eclipse in what are cyclical swings and roundabouts. Even I have written about the crippling polarisation of American politics. But last weekend I walked down 16th Street in Washington, DC, in the midst of the right-wing demonstration organised by Fox News host Glenn Beck. Far from being angry white rednecks, the people were overwhelmingly polite, middle class, church picnic types.

I walked a few blocks over to 7th Street at Chinatown and ran into Baptist minister Al Sharpton's left-wing counter-demo. They, too, were polite, friendly, well-disposed folks. The Beck crowd was mostly white, the Sharpton crowd mostly black. A lot of the Beck folks went to Chinatown for lunch or sightseeing and the two crowds mixed, as far as I could see, in perfect civility; more than that, in perfect amity.

The reality is much better than the image. Don't go writing off the US just yet. Not by a million miles.

Greg Sheridan is a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.