Constable misses progress in Iraq

In his column, "Reader's long slog of waiting for my apology to Bush" of April 10, Burt Constable laments the cost and time spent in Iraq and the many failures, but none of the positives.

He often speaks lovingly of the family vacations that he and his family take in the summer (sometimes almost sounding like a conservative), columns that I find I enjoy.

I wonder if he has ever thought of the fact that before we liberated Iraq, how many Iraqi families had the luxury of going on a family vacation, let alone had their daughters and wives be allowed to attend school and walk freely on the streets without fear of being beaten or stoned.

David Brooks, a columnist of the very liberal New York Times, said recently that "55 percent of Iraqis now say that their lives are going well, up from 39 percent last August."

He also states that "49 percent of Iraqis now say that the U.S. was right to intervene and topple Saddam Hussein and his killing, raping thug sons, which is the highest number since 2004.

He quotes a couple of peace activists that lament that at the beginning of the war, they were told that we may have to be there five years, and now look what it has become.

Anyone with even a modicum of history knowledge can look at what happened in Japan and Germany after World War II. We still have a presence in both of these countries after over 50 years and they are now two of our closest allies and supporters in this war on terror.

Thankfully, we didn't have the liberal cadre of reporters reporting on events in the South Pacific when it was not unusual to sustain 4,000 dead in a single day, much less in five years of fighting in Iraq.

Perhaps Mr. Constable should be content with the fact that neither his nor our sons and daughters have been hit with another terror attack since 2001.

Oh wait, then he would say that we didn't do enough to safeguard our country. Burt, you can't have it both ways.

Paul Robinson

Hanover Park