Is Iraq Failing? Is the Bush Doctrine Dead?

From The Bush Doctrine: An Exchange An Exchange With Norman Podhoretz in Commentary Magazine December 2006

The campaign to defeat the Bush Doctrine is doing brilliantly in the United States, but here, as summarized by the exiled Iranian commentator Amir Taheri, is a vividly concrete account of how miserably this campaign is failing in Iraq:

They kill teachers and children, but schools stay open. They kill doctors and
patients, but hospitals still function. They kill civil servants, but the
ministries are crawling back into operation. They kidnap and murder foreign
businessmen, but more keep coming. They massacre volunteers for the new army and police, but the lines of those wishing to join grow longer. They blow up
pipelines and kill oil workers, but oil still flows. They kill judges and
lawyers, but Iraq’s new courts keep on working. They machine-gun buses carrying
foreign pilgrims, but the pilgrims come back in growing numbers. They kill
newspaper boys, but newspapers still get delivered every day.

Nibras Kazimi, an Iraqi writer now living in the United States, provides a similar description of how things stand in his native land, and concludes:

It is these simple acts of courage—to keep going amidst all the threats of
terror—which were on display during the elections, but they keep happening daily even when the cameras stop rolling.

Furthermore, Kazimi writes:

It is easy for journalists to ride the “Iraq is failing” wave and churn out the
safe stories that tell us that all is bad. It is much harder for them to make
sense of why so many Iraqi policemen and soldiers are fighting back when
attacked rather than dropping their weapons and cowering for safety. Something is changing in Iraq, and it is happening despite the serial bungling of Mr. Maliki’s government or the incessant predictions of an American withdrawal. It is happening because more and more Iraqis understand what is at stake should those murderous insurgents win.

See Something Is Changing by Nibras Kazimi Novemeber 6, 2006