BEATLES IN BAGHDAD

During dinner with a Kurdish businessman in Dubai last week, I suddenly began hearing a Beatles song in my head.  Written in 1967 by John Lennon and Paul McCartney for the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, the song is Getting Better:

I've got to admit it's getting better
a little better all the time
I have to admit it's getting better…
…getting so much better all the time

His goods and products are shipped into Dubai from India, China, and elsewhere, where they are transshipped to Basra, Iraq's port, then put into containers and trucked across Iraq south to north into Iraqi Kurdistan.  On average he is trucking three container loads across Iraq a day.

I asked him what difference Bush's "surge" has made in the past couple of months.

"A very dramatic improvement," was his answer. 

He told grisly stories of how his drivers had been captured and beheaded, his goods stolen, of bribes and ransoms he always had to pay.  Now, the port of Basra is safe, his trucks are running unmolested for the 600+ miles all the way to their destinations.

Then he showed his plot plans for the community he's building in Erbil (Hawler) with 5,000 homes. 

This is a businessman with confidence in the future of Iraq – certainly the Kurdish north.

There's also growing confidence in the Shia south among those who want peace and prosperity.  The best news for them is Mookie – Moqtada al Sadr who commands his "Mahdi Army" terrorists and six stooges in the Iraqi Cabinet of Ministers – has ordered his stooges to quit.

This is a sign of real weakness on his part, and if there's one thing Middle Easterners are good at smelling it's weakness. 

In Diwaniya province, his militia has been taken out by our forces.  In Hilla, the local tribal chiefs have done the same.  Mookie is still hiding in Iran and trying to absentee control his fracturing movement.  He will be causing more problems, murder and mayhem, but sunset for him his approaching.

But what about Sunnistan, Baghdad and all of western Iraq that is predominantly Sunni?  This is the part that's been the biggest problem, provided most of the suicide bombers and terrorism – from Al Qaeda and its supporters or from Baathists, the party of Saddam.

While a lot of progress has been made getting Sunni tribal leaders in the huge western province of Anbar to join us and go after the bad guys, the great fear and frustration of the Sunnis is their now-minority status (no longer the ruling elite, they comprise only 15-20% of the population), combined with the short end of the oil stick.

Iraq has enormous oil reserves, but most of them are in the Shia south or Kurdish north.  Thus Sunnis fear the Shia and Kurdish areas will flourish with oil riches while they are relegated to the oil-less sands of the Western Deserts.

I discussed this Sunni dilemma back in August 2005 in The Map of the Middle East's Future:

Iraq has the world's second largest oil reserves at 115 billions barrels (next to Saudi at 267). This was determined under Saddam with obsolete 2D seismic technology. Most oil geologists think that 3D seismic scans will reveal much larger reserves, particularly out in the little-explored western deserts. Iraq may turn out to have more oil than Saudi Arabia.

The Kirkuk oil field is in the north, so the Kurds have that. The Rumaila, West Qurna, and Majnoon fields are in the south, so the Shias have that. What the Sunnis haven't figured out yet is that there may be more oil in the west than both fields combined. Western Iraq, you see, is Sunni.

Now it turns out that Sunni dream is true.  News stories this week are reporting that Iraq has twice as much oil, over 100 billion barrels more, out in the Sunni west – and the extraction cost is less than $2 a barrel.  The Sunnis have hit a gusher.

All we have to do now is force that fact into their thick skulls.

A horrific example of how hard it will be to do that is the coordinated spate of Sunni suicide bombings in Baghdad yesterday (4/18), killing close to 200 innocent folks, mostly Shias.

It is desperate slaughter by a pathological elite in mindless revenge.  The Sunnis, for centuries used to treating Shias as sub-human rafida (the Arabic equivalent of our N-word) just can't stand it that they are the minority now in Iraq.

Yet they have no choice but to accept that fact.  As Fouad Ajami wrote recently in the Wall St. Journal (4/11), "the Sunnis have lost the battle for Baghdad."  The great capital of Sunni Islam is now 15% Sunni, with entire districts of the city such as Rasafa and Karkh emptied of Sunnis.  Finally, Ajami notes, Sunni leaders are acknowledging the "great calamity" befallen them, from which they realize no Arab cavalry is going to rescue them.

So, Ajami believes, there at last is hope that with aching slowness, the Sunnis of Iraq will see their best future is an accommodation with a Shia majority.  And that will be a lot easier now that they have a lot of oil in their own hands.

So – despite the suicidal terrorism, should folks in Baghdad be doing a Beatles karaoke?

Yes, but.  Yes, it's getting better – but it will not really be better until we get rid of the main source of Iraq's problems:  the mullahs in Tehran.

And guess who might help George Bush get rid of them?

That means you get to guess which presidential candidate said last week:

"The bottom line with Iran is that nothing is going to change unless there is a regime change."

No, it wasn't John McCain, although his interpretation of the Beach Boys' Barbara Ann was funny ("Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran…").  It was Fred Thompson, in an interview with The Weekly Standard (4/23 issue).

He's running, guys n' gals.  He'll be announcing next month (I know where and when but I'm not at liberty to say.)  When he does, it will electrify the Right.  His candidacy will swamp the others and energize the Right into demanding victory in Iraq and regime change in Iran.

We now have the amazing possibility that things are getting better in both Baghdad and Washington.   Just look at the Supreme Court hit the pro-death forces took this week for evidence of the latter.

It's not the decision itself, it's its momentum.  This victory, however narrow (for it only bans one form of partial-birth murder), finally puts pro-deathers on the defensive.  If pro-lifers can intelligently take the offensive and not overplay their hand, all second and third trimester infanticides can soon be banned.

As I am writing this (Thursday afternoon 4/19), I just saw on Drudge that Harry Reid, the Dems' Senate leader, has proclaimed the war in Iraq is "lost."  It is the Democrats who are losing now, not America.  Infected with a treasonous hatred of their country, Democrats are the party of Death and Defeat.

They are terrified of things getting better, for the more pro-life, pro-freedom, optimistic, prosperous, and victorious America is, the more Americans vote Republican.

Good news in Iraq, good news for America is the Democrats' nightmare.  But it's our dream that can come true.