Radical Islamists are driving Christians from the Middle East, said Nina Shea,
director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute.
"From Morocco to the Persian Gulf, we are seeing the rapid erosion of Christian
populations, thought to now number no more than 15 million," Ms. Shea wrote in
National Review. "The extinction of these ancient church communities will lead to
ever more extremism within the region and polarization from the non-Muslim world."
There's one Middle Eastern country where the reverse is happening. Thousands of
people attended Christmas services in Baghdad this year. Most of the worshippers
were, of course, Christians. But in the pews with them were prominent Muslim
clerics, both Sunni and Shia.
Hadi al Jazail, a Shiite, was among the roughly 2,000 people who crammed into the
Mar Eliya church is eastern Baghdad.
"May Iraq be safe every year, and may our Christian brothers be safe every year,"
Mr. al Jazail told AP Television News. "We came to celebrate with them and to
reassure them."
Last year this couldn't have happened. Al Qaida had taken control of the Doura
neighborhood in Baghdad, where most of Iraq's Christian minority lived, in 2004.
Christians were threatened, some were murdered, many fled. But now al Qaida is
gone, and the Christians are returning.
Al Qaida didn't leave of its own accord. In all of American history, only a handful
of generals -- Grant and Sherman in the Civil War, and Douglas MacArthur with the
Inchon landing in the Korean War -- have turned a war around in so short a time as
has Gen. David Petraeus. And no one has done it with so few casualties, or so
little civilian "collateral damage." What has happened in Iraq since the troop
surge began about this time last year is a tribute to the kindness and the humanity
as well as to the courage and skill of U.S. soldiers and Marines. And to the genius
and leadership of David Petraeus. The surge strategy was mostly his idea, and he's
implemented it brilliantly.
Grant, Sherman, and MacArthur were national heroes. Their names were on everyone's
lips. Parades were thrown in their honor. Grant became president. Sherman could
have been, had he wanted to be. MacArthur was touted for the Republican nomination
in 1952, which went instead to another successful general.
David Petraeus is a better general than were William Henry Harrison, elected
president in 1840, or Zachary Taylor, elected president in 1848. Yet David Petraeus
is the Rodney Dangerfield of successful American commanders. He didn't even make
the top ten in Gallup's poll of the most admired men for 2007, a list that was
topped by President Bush, and includes former South African President Nelson
Mandela, former President Jimmy Carter, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Americans don't think much about Gen. Petraeus because he hasn't been getting much
attention from the news media. He finished fifth in Time Magazine's Person of the
Year competition, behind Russian despot Vladimir Putin, environmental blowhard Al
Gore, childrens' novelist J.K. Rowling, and Chinese despot Hu Jintao.
Back in 2006, when we were perceived to be losing it, the war in Iraq was voted the
top news story in the AP's annual poll. But now that we're clearly winning, the war
in Iraq has fallen to third in the AP poll for 2007, behind the massacre at Virginia
Tech last April, and the mortgage crisis.
"The war in Iraq is the biggest nonstory of the moment, an overarching situation
that is largely missing in action from the daily media rundown," wrote Joanne
Ostrow, the television critic for the Denver Post.
For the first 37 weeks of 2007, the three network newscasts devoted a total of 1,659
minutes to the war in Iraq, said the Pew Research Center for the People and the
Press. In the subsequent 12 weeks, just 197 minutes.
"It's like ignoring D-Day," said Don Surber of the Charleston (WVa) Daily Mail.
Success in Iraq is being downplayed because it is embarrassing to most journalists
and Democrats, and disappointing to some. Does Hillary Clinton want a ticker tape
parade for Gen. Petraeus, who she, in effect, called a liar last September? Does
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want to be reminded he declared the war lost last
April?
We have the finest military in the world. There is little indication we deserve it.
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