Christopher Hitchens is not renowned for his naivete or his credulity. So when he returns from Iraq and says things are going pretty well over there, it’s worth taking note– even if he says it on Fox News:
It’s quite extraordinary to see the way that American soldiers are welcomed. To see the work that they’re doing and not just rolling up these filthy networks of Baathists and Jihaddists, but building schools, opening soccer stadiums, helping people connect to the Internet, there is a really intelligent political program as well as a very tough military one.
I hope he’s right, but there are so many conflicting reports coming from Iraq that it’s hard to gauge a trend one way or the other. It seems, as Hitchens suggests, that much of the media have bought into the quagmire scenario. Of course everyone who reports from there is seeing just a small part of huge and changing picture.
I think Roger L. Simon was right when he wrote in his blog: “No one–not you, not me, not George Bush, not even Howard Dean–knows how we are really doing in Iraq and won’t for a long time to come.”
