A Deep, Inspiring Contrast

This is a story of Iraq and light and dark. Let's start with the light.

When Col. Jimmie Jaye Wells helicopters over Baghdad at night, he smiles seeing the city sparkling brilliantly below. As Deputy for Operations Support in the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, Wells knows how much work went into not just reconstructing Iraq's power grid, but also making it more equitable than the Saddam-centered system that existed before liberation.

Wells is also proud of the Iraqi technocrats he works with, who "toil late into the evening to create a new democratic government." He's proud of the Ministerial Attaches from the US who are helping Iraqis build the complex infrastructure of democracy -- 32 democratic, equitable ministries -- from the ground up.

He's proud of the water-treatment plant in Nasiriya that will provide water for more than a million people in southern Iraq. "It, like democracy, can't be thrown together in a matter of weeks," he says.

Wells' story (source, h/t RCP) is an American story, played over and over agan across history. As he puts it:

None [of our investments in reconstruction] was an overnight success. Reconstruction after the American Civil War took at least 10 years amid vigilantism and extremism. After the Philippine-American War of 1899, the U.S. Army built schools and hospitals and developed democratic institutions there.

After the surrender of Japan, ending the Pacific war, some 190,000 engineer troops went about rebuilding Japan. Again, with U.S. help, this moved from a militaristic, feudal culture into a modern democracy within seven years. In Germany, former Nazi die-hards and Waffen-SS miscreants waged a deadly terrorism campaign against international aid workers, Germans and Allied troops. But under the European Recovery Program of 1948, or Marshall Plan, work continued, and West Germany became a sovereign nation 10 years after the war.

Yet there are those to skoff at all we've done in just a couple years in Iraq!

Now, the dark. When I booted up this morning, I was greeted by a Yahoo News headline shouting, Iraqi Rebels Attack In Ramadi. It's just the sort of negative reporting Wells complained about in his piece, a report not simply of bad news, but a report that distorts the bad news out of proportion.

Here's the attack that made this story the lead on Yahoo:

Insurgents launched a brief assault west of Baghdad on Thursday, firing mortar rounds and rockets at a U.S. base and local government buildings, the day after Washington unveiled its new strategy for victory in Iraq.

Oh, good! says the media. Here's some bad news we can use to introduce Bush's speech!

Residents said gangs of heavily armed men wearing masks attacked a U.S. garrison in the center of Ramadi, a rebellious city 110 km (65 miles) west of Baghdad, and fired on nearby council offices before seizing several streets.

Leaflets were distributed saying that al Qaeda in Iraq, the group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was taking control. But after a couple of hours, most of the militants dispersed and the city appeared to return to relative calm.

A couple hours. They commit a couple hours to terror and death, while Wells and his compratiots devote years to creating a free Iraq.

The U.S. military played down the assault.

"Reports of insurgents taking control of Ramadi are completely unsubstantiated," Captain Patrick Kerr of the 2nd Marine Division said in an emailed statement. "There have been a few sporadic small-arms engagements, but nothing out of the ordinary."

An earlier report numbered the attackers at a few dozen, so any report of insurgents taking control of Ramadi were wildly inaccurate. Control is not their game; they want none of it. They're not building; they're destroying.

They, not unlike Dems in Congress, have nothing positive to offer; they offer only attacks. They are the dark; we and our allies are the light.