Daily Inspiration Quote by Iyad Allawi

The line is doing battlefield triage on public perception: stabilize the narrative first, then deal with the wounds. Allawi’s repetition of “succeeding” isn’t poetic; it’s defensive. In the mid-2000s, “Iraq” had become shorthand for chaos, insurgency, and a faltering U.S.-led project. Saying “we are succeeding” twice is less a report than a counterspell, meant to drown out images of car bombs and sectarian bloodletting with a single, declarative verb.

The concession clause - “It’s a tough struggle with setbacks” - is the quote’s real craft. It inoculates against disbelief. By acknowledging hardship, Allawi signals realism and authority, inviting listeners to trust the conclusion precisely because it’s not naïvely upbeat. The structure is classic political messaging: concede a little to claim a lot. “Setbacks” also does careful moral work; it frames violence and political breakdown as temporary obstacles on a fundamentally right track, rather than as evidence the track itself might be wrong.

Context matters because Allawi’s “we” is elastic. It can mean Iraqi security forces, a transitional government, coalition partners, or a fragile national “we” still being imagined. That ambiguity is useful. It spreads ownership of progress while diluting responsibility for failure. The intent isn’t just to describe conditions; it’s to keep a coalition - domestic and international - from losing its nerve. In a war where legitimacy was as contested as territory, “succeeding” is a bid to manufacture momentum.