The good first:
Still, Iraq is in most respects further along the road to recovery than we could have expected before the war. All major public hospitals in Baghdad are again operating. Sixty percent of Iraq’s schools are open. Nationwide distribution of food supplies has resumed. Despite some damage to the oil wells, petroleum production exceeds domestic needs, and exports should begin again soon. More Iraqis are receiving electric power than before the war. This progress is the result of efforts by capable Iraqi civil servants working with experts from the coalition governments and international humanitarian groups.
The bad next:
After World War II, the United States rebuilt Germany and Japan with great success. Against this admittedly very high standard, the country’s performance in the 1990’s began abysmally, and improved only slowly. While it is too early to pass final judgment on the Afghanistan and Iraq missions, it would be hard to present them as improvements over their most recent predecessors, Bosnia and Kosovo.
In other words, things are gong better in Iraq than some would like you to think, but we have a really lousy record at nation building in recent years.
stephen
Of course our public commitment to Iraq, the amount of “face” involved, is far greater than in Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkans.