Editorial: Grounds for Hope

Hardly a day goes by in Iraq without some new atrocity to further drain confidence in stability being established there in the foreseeable future. The only comfort to be drawn from yesterday’s car bomb outside a Baghdad mosque was that no one was killed. Not so Thursday’s attack near the town of Ramadi which killed five US Marines or the previous day’s triple outrage in and around Baghdad which left 39 Iraqi soldiers and civilians dead or Tuesday’s attack when at least 22 people were killed in a suicide attack in Kirkuk. The possibility of sudden, violent death is the overriding fact of life in Iraq today, one that everyone — civilians, Iraqi soldiers and policemen, and occupying forces as well — has to contend with. The killing spree appears unstoppable, the insurgency inexorable and the insurgents’ lust for blood insatiable. Even US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has had to admit that Iraq is now as dangerous as it was immediately after the war. Around 1,000 people have died, mostly Iraqis, since the Iraqi government was sworn in, less than two months ago.

While many are seeing signs of gloom in Iraq, the Saudis are also seeing some hopeful signs.

One of those signs is that Iraqis are not fleeing their country, looking for asylum elsewhere. They seem determined to make their country work. This editorial also notes that the terrorists are being hunted down and their leaders killed or captured. And the Iraqis are finding a workable political solution, even if it did take longer than the US had hoped or expected.

Worth reading the whole thing.