A cheerless anniversary in a broken country

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In one sense, Tony Blair and George Bush could draw comfort from yesterday's scene in Najaf. There they were, tens of thousands of Iraqis marching peacefully on the fourth anniversary of the day when a crowd in Baghdad toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein.

Surely, Blairite spokesmen will say, this is evidence of the new Middle Eastern democracy we fought for. Could such a demonstration have taken place under the old regime? Of course not. Never mind that the rally was bitterly anti-American, reflecting the sentiments of its absent mastermind, Muqtada al-Sadr. That's what democracy is all about.

The freedom to hold rallies apart, this is a doleful, cheerless anniversary. Even if we accept that the sight of the statue of the Iraqi dictator crashing down was more choreographed than we then realised, the gap between the hopes raised on 9 April 2004 and reality four years on is shocking. It is not simply the sheer number of sectarian killings that numbs the spirit; it is the absence of hope - the lack of any apparent strategy to bring this horror to a close.

Messrs Bush and Blair disagree, pointing to evidence of a lull in sectarian violence in Baghdad as a result of the so-called "surge" in US forces in Iraq. All decent people, whether they backed or opposed the war, must hope this is true for the sake of the long-suffering Iraqis. But the evidence is inconclusive at best, and tends rather to suggest that this last gasp of US military power in Iraq resembles the frantic buzzing of a dying wasp.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2437259.ece