Good Versus Perfect

With all the gloom and doom reports coming out of Iraq, one would think (and many incorrectly do) that the US has completely failed in Iraq, and only the UN can fix things now. This is patently false, though the US has made many mistakes in post-war Iraq, it is highly doubtful, given its record, that the UN would do better or even as well. Mark Steyn addresses these issues in his Jerusalem Post article:

The best rule of politics is this: Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Is the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq perfect? No.

Is it good? Yes.

Was Saddam Hussein's rule perfect? No.
Was it good? No.

This shouldn't be a tough call. But, shortly after the liberation, the bespoke apologists for the Middle East's thug regimes and the more depraved "peace activists" in Europe set themselves a tall order – to prove that the Iraqis were better off under Saddam. At first, they confined this proposition to matters such as drinking water.

When some of us pointed out that the potable water supply in Iraq is now double what it was pre-war, or that health care funding is 25 times larger than it was a year ago, Europe's Saddamite cheerleaders gave up this line of attack. It was always rather boring and technocratic, anyway. So now they've got right down to basics – not potable water but "torture." Why, Bush is torturing just as many Iraqis as Saddam did!
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Is the UN perfect? No.

Is the UN good? Well, I'm not sure I'd even say that. But if you object to what's going on in those Abu Ghraib pictures – the sexual humiliation of prisoners and their conscription as a vast army of extras in their guards' porno fantasies – then you might want to think twice about handing over Iraq to the UN.