Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Smiles the Democrats don't want you to see

Michael Totten's latest from Ramadi. It's long, so if you don't have time to read it all now, at least check out the pictures: there are an awful lot of smiles, considering the Democrats and others on the Left would have us believe these people are suffering under the yoke of American oppression. A couple of paragraphs:

The Iraqis of Anbar Province turned against Al Qaeda and sided with the Americans in large part because Al Qaeda proved to be far more vicious than advertised. But it’s also because sustained contact with the American military – even in an explosively violent combat zone – convinced these Iraqis that Americans are very different people from what they had been led to believe. They finally figured out that the Americans truly want to help and are not there to oppress them or steal from them. And the Americans slowly learned how Iraqi culture works and how to blend in rather than barge in.

“We hand out care packages from the U.S. to Iraqis now that the area has been cleared of terrorists,” one Marine told me. “When we tell them that some of these packages aren’t from the military or the government, that they were donated by average American citizens in places like Kansas, people choke up and sometimes even cry. They just can’t comprehend it. It is so different from the lies they were told about us and how we’re supposed to be evil.”

How ironic that the likes of MoveOn, together with many Democrats and elements of the MSM, are continuing to spin the line that US troops are evil, even as ordinary Iraqis are finding out the reality for themselves.

If the New York Times or Newsweek were to run a story like Totten's, complete with the pictures, it would be the equivalent of Cronkite declaring that the Vietnam war was lost, except in reverse of course. That's why they won't do it.

Related: Oxford Medievalist has more on the Democrats' summer offensive that failed to materialise.

No comments: