Nobody seems to dispute that Iraqi PM Iyad Allawi’s visit to the U.S. was arranged for political purposes. What the big media pundits don’t seem to realize is that it was more than that; the Iraqi people are listening, too.

So, when Maureen Dowd writes for the New York Times that “the Republicans have trotted out Mr. Allawi as an objective analyst of the state of conditions in Iraq,” she ignores the fact that Allawi must remain positive and optimistic in his public statements. He must sustain the morale of the Iraqi people in order to secure their future.

IraqiPundit responds:

It’s exactly that future — the Iraqis’ future — that Dowd can’t be bothered with. To her, it’s an occasion for cheap sarcasm. “Faced with their dystopia,” she writes, amusing herself. “the utopians are scaling back their grand visions for Iraq’s glorious future.”

Critics like Dowd see Iraq and Iraqis as beyond redemption, if not beneath contempt. Certainly, they are not worth bothering with or thinking about.

There’s a smattering of dissent, but it’s the doomsayers who seem to have the spotlight. Let us hope this only serves to challenge Iraqis to prove the press wrong.