Posted on 03/13/2006 9:35:40 PM PST by smoothsailing
March 14, 2006
Myths of Iraq
By Ralph Peters
During a recent visit to Baghdad, I saw an enormous failure. On the part of our media. The reality in the streets, day after day, bore little resemblance to the sensational claims of civil war and disaster in the headlines.
No one with first-hand experience of Iraq would claim the country's in rosy condition, but the situation on the ground is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe. Lurid exaggerations and instant myths obscure real, if difficult, progress.
I left Baghdad more optimistic than I was before this visit. While cynicism, political bias and the pressure of a 24/7 news cycle accelerate a race to the bottom in reporting, there are good reasons to be soberly hopeful about Iraq's future.
Much could still go wrong. The Arab genius for failure could still spoil everything. We've made grave mistakes.
Still, it's difficult to understand how any first-hand observer could declare that Iraq's been irrevocably "lost."
Consider just a few of the inaccuracies served up by the media:
Claims of civil war.
In the wake of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a flurry of sectarian attacks inspired wild media claims of a collapse into civil war. It didn't happen. Driving and walking the streets of Baghdad, I found children playing and, in most neighborhoods, business as usual. Iraq can be deadly, but, more often, it's just dreary.
Iraqi disunity.
Factional differences are real, but overblown in the reporting. Few Iraqis support calls for religious violence. After the Samarra bombing, only rogue militias and criminals responded to the demagogues' calls for vengeance. Iraqis refused to play along, staging an unrecognized triumph of passive resistance.
Expanding terrorism.
On the contrary, foreign terrorists, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have lost ground. They've alienated Iraqis of every stripe. Iraqis regard the foreigners as murderers, wreckers and blasphemers, and they want them gone. The Samarra attack may, indeed, have been a tipping point--against the terrorists.
Hatred of the U.S. military.
If anything surprised me in the streets of Baghdad, it was the surge in the popularity of U.S. troops among both Shias and Sunnis. In one slum, amid friendly adult waves, children and teenagers cheered a U.S. Army patrol as we passed. Instead of being viewed as occupiers, we're increasingly seen as impartial and well-intentioned.
The appeal of the religious militias.
They're viewed as mafias. Iraqis want them disarmed and disbanded. Just ask the average citizen.
The failure of the Iraqi army.
Instead, the past month saw a major milestone in the maturation of Iraq's military. During the mini-crisis that followed the Samarra bombing, the Iraqi army put over 100,000 soldiers into the country's streets. They defused budding confrontations and calmed the situation without killing a single civilian. And Iraqis were proud to have their own army protecting them. The Iraqi army's morale soared as a result of its success.
Reconstruction efforts have failed.
Just not true. The American goal was never to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure in its entirety. Iraqis have to do that. Meanwhile, slum-dwellers utterly neglected by Saddam Hussein's regime are getting running water and sewage systems for the first time. The Baathist regime left the country in a desolate state while Saddam built palaces. The squalor has to be seen to be believed. But the hopeless now have hope.
The electricity system is worse than before the war.
Untrue again. The condition of the electric grid under the old regime was appalling. Yet, despite insurgent attacks, the newly revamped system produced 5,300 megawatts last summer--a full thousand megawatts more than the peak under Saddam Hussein. Shortages continue because demand soared--newly free Iraqis went on a buying spree, filling their homes with air conditioners, appliances and the new national symbol, the satellite dish. Nonetheless, satellite photos taken during the hours of darkness show Baghdad as bright as Damascus.
Plenty of serious problems remain in Iraq, from bloodthirsty terrorism to the unreliability of the police. Iran and Syria indulge in deadly mischief. The infrastructure lags generations behind the country's needs. Corruption is widespread. Tribal culture is pernicious. Women’s rights are threatened. And there's no shortage of trouble-making demagogues.
Nonetheless, the real story of the civil-war-that-wasn't is one of the dog that didn't bark. Iraqis resisted the summons to retributive violence. Mundane life prevailed. After a day and a half of squabbling, the political factions returned to the negotiating table. Iraqis increasingly take responsibility for their own security, easing the burden on U.S. forces. And the people of Iraq want peace, not a reign of terror.
But the foreign media have become a destructive factor, extrapolating daily crises from minor incidents. Part of this is ignorance. Some of it is willful. None of it is helpful.
The dangerous nature of journalism in Iraq has created a new phenomenon, the all-powerful local stringer.
Unwilling to stray too far from secure facilities and their bodyguards, reporters rely heavily on Iraqi assistance in gathering news. And Iraqi stringers, some of whom have their own political agendas, long ago figured out that Americans prefer bad news to good news.
The Iraqi leg-men earn blood money for unbalanced, often-hysterical claims, while the Journalism 101 rule of seeking confirmation from a second source has been discarded in the pathetic race for headlines.
To enhance their own indispensability, Iraqi stringers exaggerate the danger to Western journalists (which is real enough, but need not paralyze a determined reporter). Dependence on the unverified reports of local hires has become the dirty secret of semi-celebrity journalism in Iraq as Western journalists succumb to a version of Stockholm Syndrome in which they convince themselves that their Iraqi sources and stringers are exceptions to every failing and foible in the Middle East. The mindset resembles the old colonialist conviction that, while other "boys" might lie and steal, our house-boy's a faithful servant.
The result is that we're being told what Iraqi stringers know they can sell and what distant editors crave, not what's actually happening.
While there are and have been any number of courageous, ethical journalists reporting from Iraq, others know little more of the reality of the streets than you do. They report what they are told by others, not what they have seen themselves. The result is a distorted, unfair and disheartening picture of a country struggling to rise above its miserable history.
......................
Ralph Peters is a retired U.S. Army officer and the author of 20 books, including the recent New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy.
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Peters is a very smart man and he isn't bias one bit. He believes Rummy should get the boot big time. If you read his book he lays out quite clearly how Rummy used Iraq to further test his theory of a lighter, cheeper, faster, and less deadly war and refused to change course or even admit there was an insurgency for months and months. Rummy is a good man, but his stubborness and pride are his biggest flaws.
I'd love to think that all of this is a big mistake on the part of the media. However, I was a reporter and editor for 15 years, and I know better. Most of my former comrades (to use a loaded term) are advocates interesting in using the media to make the world a better place - a mission that is difficult with a person like Bush in power and the Republicans ascendant. The solution? Undermine when you can. Delegitimize those in power. Always offer the progressive solution. Offer leftist opinion as revealed truth. I've seen it in person. It doesn't surprise me that it is happening as the media covers the war in Iraq. My fear is that the media will succeed in their mission, which will produce a backlash like no other in our country's history. It would be profound irony that the people who want revolutionary change are the first ones targeted in the counter-revolution. Hopefully, all this will work out in America's favor. I hope.
Yet another testament of what's really happening in Iraq. We can only hope the MSM starts picking these accounts up and putting them out.
Satan!!!!
:-) Just kidding, redpoll.
Another good post, ss. Keep 'em coming.
bump for later reading.
Rummy had the right idea, he just tested it on the wrong war.
Or as he would say; "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want."
We're catching up now and in the end Rummy's vision of our future force will be a sound one.
Why insinuate your special knowledge about the Col's disagreement with his superiors? That was'nt the gist of his comments here.
If you've been around the military any time at all, contrary ideas about how to run things is the priviledge of all officers. These guys happen to be our best trained professionals and are entitled to theitr contrary opinions.
The Col. deserves our gratitude for his years of service and his forthright effort to provide an informed point of view.
(Smoothsailing gets "attaboys" for his consistent vigilence and service to all of us.)
The MSM doesn't have ONE JOURNALIST willing to go out and do the hard investigative work necessary to bring a more realistic story about Iraq. As long as they pay the 'stringers' to go out and gather news for them while they sit in the green zone sipping margaritas.
I hear the more horrific the story the more the stringers get paid. Is it any wonder all we get is death and destruction?!
The media has failed not our soldiers. Most of Iraq is still stable, children play in the streets and wave happily to our soldiers. I'd like to see one report with happy smiling Iraqi faces. Maybe I've missed them but I've seen the pictures from the field, and the grateful faces. If we leave Iraq before it is ready and it falls into civil war then one thing will have been made true, it will be like Vietnam and we will once again have failed like we did in Saigon when we left thousands of innocent people who had faith in us and trusted us to be murdered. If we allow the cowards in the media to drive us from our mutual duty we shall reap the rewards of that cowardice if not in blood but our very souls.
Have you read any of Peters books?
His last one New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy is the one that deals mainly with the Iraq War and its aftermath.
If you want a very good explination of things that were done right and things that were done wrong you should read that book.
They'll get neither.
bump for morning inspiration
The only reason they got their Vietnam is because conservatives weren't organized at the time. That has changed and conservatives need to be emboldened by that fact and quit falling back into the trap of expecting the media to be fair. We make our own fairness by opening our mouths and refusing the left safe habor in our silence.
You've misse the point of the post.
...by a mile.
BTTT
What we really need is a good scouring of the media by our soldiers.
Point out the frauds and anti-American, anti-military types and let barracks justice prevail.
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