Go read Arthur Chrenkoff!

Arthur Chrenkoff has several excellent posts today:

• "Good News From Iraq", Part 13. (Also at Opinion Journal)

  There are two Iraqs.
  
  The one we more often get to see and read about is a dangerous place, full of exploding cars, kidnapped foreigners and deadly ambushes. The reconstruction is proceeding at a snail's pace, frustration boils over and tensions - political, ethnic, religious - crackle in the air like static electricity before a storm.
  
  The other Iraq is a once prosperous and promising country of twenty-four million people, slowly recovering from physical and moral devastation of totalitarian rule. It's a country whose people are slowly beginning to stand on their own feet, grasp the opportunities undreamed of only two years ago, and dream of catching up on three decades of lost time.

• S11 Republicans
  

  One of the very interesting consequences of S11 and the Bush presidency seems to be the increasing polarisation of the electorate. While the passion - and hatred - among the Democrat base, as well as the international left broadly speaking, is getting more strident every day, on the other hand many previously "soft" conservatives have strengthened their ideological stance, and many moderates and even leftists have been forced to rethink their previous commitments, often becoming what is now known as "S11 Republicans".

• Kerry's "Coalition of the Bribed" gets bribed by Kerry
  

  Remember when John Kerry described the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq as not a "genuine coalition" but "some trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted"?
  
  If you do, you might be surprised to learn that Kerry's policy to attract back more allies and get them to share the burden in Iraq is to bribe and buy them even more.

• Guest blogger: Rebuilding Afghanistan, Part 1
  

  Today, the first of three parts of a report by Rob, Regional Director of Central Asian Free Exchange (CAFE), who has spent the last three years making the difference on the ground in Afghanistan. His is an invaluable first-hand, sleeves rolled-up, account of the work being done to transform one of the poorest and most unfortunate countries in Asia.