Before We “Surge” in Their Country

Silvia Spring writes in Newsweek International that since the fall of Saddam:

* Iraqi real-estate prices have gone up several hundred percent

* Iraqi workers’ salaries have increased more than 100 percent

* The number of cars in Baghdad has grown by 500 percent

* The Iraqi construction, retail and wholesale trade sectors are all growing

* The number of registered businesses increased from 8,000 to 34,000

* The number of cell phone subscribers increased from 1.4 million to 7.1 million

* Stores are stocked with goods and consumers are buying them

Furthermore, taxes have been cut, government revenues are up and oil revenues and foreign grants are estimated at $41 billion for the year just ended. The World Bank estimates that Iraq’s economy grew at four percent in 2006 (it estimates the “Euro area” grew at 2.9 percent).

This is not to gloss over the gaping and bloody problems of Iraq or the difficult choices that have to be made there. It is, however, to remind Americans that as the American president prepares to make an important speech about American policy and American troops and American resolve, he is making it about Iraq - a country in which Iraqi people are showing Iraqi resolve to make choices about the Iraqi future despite a number of Iraqi deaths that far outstrips those of the coalition. The Iraqi Interior Ministry reported 12,320 civilian deaths in 2006 with almost 1,900 in December.