A DISCOURAGING DAY

Yesterday was a discouraging day for those of us who believe in the mission in Iraq. Steven Vincent, a freelance journalist who also seemed to believe in the righteousness of the cause (while oftentimes being critical of the manners and methods being used), was murdered in Basra.

He ran a blog called In the Red Zone. Take a few minutes to read his last post, then check out his last commentary piece on the National Review website. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the potential suspects in his murder. In fact, the major difficulty is not identifying suspects but trying to figure which group of thugs, thieves or fanatics got to him first.

The murder is discouraging because Basra, and the entire southern area, is not the most difficult part of the country for U.S. and pro-government Iraqi forces fighting the insurgents. Vincent's descriptions of the area seem to indicate a boiling pot of corruption, fanaticism, Iranian meddling and local incompetence.

Combined with the news from the northwest, as U.S. forces take significant casualties fighting insurgents who are being aided by people in Syria, including one story that seems to indicate our Marines were betrayed by ostensibly pro-government Iraqis, it creates a very discouraging picture.

I keep coming back to something Thomas Friedman wrote a couple of years ago in the New York Times. He said that what we needed to figure out about Iraq was simply whether or not Iraq is the way it is because of Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein was the way he was because of Iraq. In other words, is Iraq a dysfunctional, barbarous place because Saddam, his sons and his cronies brutalized them, or was he a brutal tyrant because that is the only way to keep the country together in some semblance of order?

Yesterday's events give more ammunition to those who believe the latter. A very discouraging day, indeed.