Iraqis Look To Politics And A Bright Future

Thanks to the US troop surge and change in tactics put in place by Generals Petraeus and Odierno Iraq is undergoing a truly inspiring transformation. Politics is now all the rage in Iraq and political parties, over 500 of them, vie for votes and power with ballots and not bombs and bullets in the runup to cominy provencial elections. The Sunni block has returned to the government in Baghdad now that PM Maliki has shown he will crack down on the Shia militias. Markets are opening and the infrastructure is being rebuilt. Kim Kagan has a must read piece in the Weekly Standard about all the political prodress that has been made and reports on a meeting she had with one of those many parties at their headquarters.

Our host gives us a brief tour of the headquarters. It is strikingly familiar, reminiscent of hundreds of town and county election headquarters in the United States. A widescreen television in the large conference room displays news continuously. A freshly photocopied stack of flyers sits in an anteroom, explaining the party's position on the strategic agreement between Iraq and the United States that is the subject of intense debate throughout the country. Party officials responsible for different districts of Baghdad plan to distribute the flyers door to door over the weekend, assisted by staff and volunteers. They are preparing another round of flyers for next week. Nearby, young men and women sit at a bank of computers writing and designing the party's newspaper and laying out the advertisements that pay for its production. The color photographs in today's edition highlight a recent event sponsored by the party's youth committee: an awards ceremony for school children who have gotten top grades this academic year.

Iraqis see a bright future for themselves and we need to do everything we can to help them along not abandon them to the thugs of AQ or the hegemony of Iran.