Drei schmutzige kleine Geheimnisse

Three dirty little secrets are revealed on the pages of the German periodical, Der Spiegel, a magazine whose support for coalition adventure in Iraq could never be mistaken as enthusiastic. They are contained within a remarkably fair and textured multi-part analysis on the state of the war-ravaged country in military, political and economic terms.

What are they, these secrets?

1) That the US military effort in Iraq is much more successful than most people understand and many want to admit.

2) That it just might work.

3) That it must.

It’s not all sweetness and light of course, neither in Iraq – especially Baghdad, where sectarian tensions still simmer and often boil over – nor even in the magazine’s pages themselves, as the writer gives way at times to the “Bush lied” theory of original sin, or finds himself at times provoked by the good news he discovers:

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq — it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq — not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers — are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn’t hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious “Sunni Triangle,” is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

Still, well worth the time.