The refugee indicator

Miranda Devine in the Sydney Morning Herald:

[E]very televised beheading... is a reminder of who the real enemy is (hint: not John Howard or George Bush) and who the intended victims are (Christians, Jews, moderate Muslims, anyone who gets in the way). It is a reminder that the war between the civilised West and fanatical Islamic terrorists is real, not a war against an abstract noun [snap, Miranda]...

The consensus in the media is that Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster, and a self-fulfilling liability for Howard and Bush in their upcoming elections. Every terrorist atrocity is somehow placed into the Iraq-is-a-disaster matrix, with blame apportioned accordingly, not to the terrorists but to the governments of the coalition, which should have left Saddam alone. Thus, when Islamic terrorists bombed commuter trains in Madrid in March, who was blamed but the Spanish government, which had joined the US coalition in Iraq and was voted out of office as punishment three days later.
.....
Yet, despite the terrible press, our side [horrors, Jackie] is, in fact, making significant progress in the challenges which are part of the war on terrorism.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai presides over a fledgling democracy in a country liberated from Taliban oppression. In Iraq, with less than a week until the interim government takes over ahead of elections in January, the move to democracy continues, despite car bombings and assassinations. One sign of progress is that a quarter of the seats in Iraq's national assembly assembly are reserved for women.

But perhaps the most telling sign is what you could call the "refugee indicator" of success. Last week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, reported that the number of refugees worldwide had dropped to its lowest level in a decade, falling by 18 per cent to just over 17 million.
.....
The UNHCR also found 81 per cent fewer Iraqis claimed asylum this year than last year, and is now preparing for the return of more than half a million Iraqis. "Nearly 5 million people ... over the past few years have been able to either go home or to find a new place to rebuild their lives," Lubbers told the BBC. "For them, these dry statistics reflect a special reality: the end of long years in exile and the start of a new life with renewed hope for the future."

More than half a million people also returned to Afghanistan last year, something Lubbers said was "phenomenal [and] underscores the benefits of sustained international attention". International attention as in wiping out the Taliban, and removing Saddam.

Refugees have registered their approval by voting with their feet.

(Hat tip: Jim Nolan.)