Check out this article about police in Baghdad starting to issue tickets for drivers not wearing seatbelts. While it may not seem like much I think these quote from two Iraqi men sums it up.
“It is a symbol of civilization,” said a taxi driver, Ahmed Wahayid, whose 1993 Hyundai Elantra was stuck in a long line of cars waiting to clear a checkpoint. “Western people in Europe and America have it, so we are like them.”
But primarily, General Mraweh sees his job (writing tickets - ed.) as a way to piece together his shattered country.
“If everyone says there are killings, there are massacres, then I will stay powerless at home and this will disable the country,” he said. “But if the grocer goes to work, the merchant goes to work, I go to work, even you go to work, there will be no more killing, and the criminal will be afraid and he will go back to his den like a mouse.”
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Lots of positive changes there, but that doesn't fit the narrative.
I rather like Instapundit's comment this morning:
"CHICAGO SOUNDS LIKE MOSUL:" That's an email from . . . Michael Yon, who knows his Mosul. Here's the story on last weekend's violence. Still, they're different: One has crooked officials, violent gangs with their hooks into government and law enforcement, and a culture of corruption that has resisted the central government's effects to clean it up, and the other is a city in Iraq.
UPDATE: Fred Butzen emails: "I'm surprised you overlooked this difference: One has crazy preachers, and the other is in the Middle East."
MORE: Another reader emails:
It really should be no surprise, since Chicago and Illinois itself have been failing to reach their political benchmarks for years now.
It is too bad there is not some powerful politician who might have served the Chicago area and brought them Change and Hope. If there was, we could blame him for the "complete failure" to achieve those political benchmarks and reduce sectarian strife.
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