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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You make good points but Doug Rokke was the military's leading specialist in dealing with DU and in fact created many of the protocols in dealing with this problem and I've heard two interviews with him where he's categorically stated that the radioactivity associated with DU will last decades if not longer and will kill far more people than Saddam ever dreamed of.........I can provide you info on where to hear the interview if you'd like.......it is very, very powerful. If the majority of Americans across the country heard his interview we'd be out of Iraq in a month or sooner.
Not when the book is written by the likes of Ralph Peters. The man is a retired Army Intelligence officer. He's got two books (of 48) on the Army War College reading list Put his name into the War College's search engine, and you get 90 hits, either articles he's written, or other's comments on those articles.
Now don't get me wrong, I like Rummy, and I like his style. But about some things, I think he's too much the former corporate executive, and not enough the former Navy aviator. (He retired from the Naval Reserve in '89 as a Captain). Of course I don't always agree with Peters either, especially his opinion of the Air Force and it's procurement system, I thought the Air Force system was not very good, until I got a look at those of the Army and Navy. Yuck. (Of course the comparison is not 100% fair, since my "look" at each came at different times in the last few decades.)
Well, yes, but at that level if you aren't getting the resources you need, you make it known to your boss, and if you can't get what you need (Support for increased resources, since Congress actually doles them out) from him, you fall on your sword, noisily.
If Peters says it's going well, you can be assured that he is saying what he truly believes. There is no political agenda here. He despises Rumsfeld.
The hypocrist of the mainstream media never ceases to amaze me. If they want to be open leftists and write for Mother Jones, fine. That is their right and there is a proclaimed agenda at publications like that. But to pretend to be from a nuetral, unbiased news source and consistently toe the leftist line to fulfill some idea of a "mission" is hypocritical, dishonest and dangerous.
Bottom line - if they want to make the world a better place they should go work for the Peace Corp.
I don't know the original source of their disagreement, they've both been around a long time.It might go back further than the past five years.
I'm glad you're aware of Rokke and his message.....I have no doubts the MSM is doing selectively reporting over there (as usual) but after what I've learned about DU, it'll make me sick seeing smiling Iraqi kids knowing there's a good chance many will die from radiation poisoning or seeing our young warriors living in an environment that has bred high rates of cancer, leukemia, and other debillitating non-combat related diseases among our vets.......it's a travesty.
I'm glad you're aware of Rokke and his message.....I have no doubts the MSM is doing selectively reporting over there (as usual) but after what I've learned about DU, it'll make me sick seeing smiling Iraqi kids knowing there's a good chance many will die from radiation poisoning or seeing our young warriors living in an environment that has bred high rates of cancer, leukemia, and other debillitating non-combat related diseases among our vets.......it's a travesty.
MUST READ PING
How many Baghdad eyewitnesses do we need to form a concensus?
Bump.
It's true. I'm in Baghdad. I've been posting things similar to what Peters says for some time now.
I have nothing to gain or lose by posting the truth. I just call it as I see it.
Another viewpoint to consider
Not this crap again. [sigh] An insurgency was anticipated before the first boots ever hit the ground. Anybody who wants to nitpick with 20/20 hindsight, including Mr. Peters, is welcome to. But it's nothing but armchair quarterbacking. The Administration knew full well the Fedayeen freaks and foreign terrorists would be active. Sure, they hoped the insurgency would die more quickly. Who didn't?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-10-24-insurgence-intel_x.htm
Excerpt from a USA Today hit piece, but it puts this nonsense to bed:
Two reports by the National Intelligence Council, a group of senior analysts that pools assessments from across the nation's intelligence community, warned Bush in January 2003, two months before the invasion, that the conflict could spark factional violence and an anti-U.S. insurgency, the official said.
At least until the next time someone here repeats it as Gospel.
Honestly, who in his/her right mind would NOT have anticipated an insurgency? Can anyone really say that? It's patently absurd.
When Peters is Secretary of Defence he can run things his way.
Or he can do what his critics say.
Rumsfeld is the best thing that has happened to America Armed Forces in the last 30 years - At every turn he is looking to release our warriors and let them fight - He is not a man looking for excuses or "why we can't reasons" from the old big Green......which is why there are plenty of old dinosaurs out of that old big Green that tend to take shots at him.
Rummy is a good man, but his stubborness and pride are his biggest flaws.
Those are two qualities on the battlefield that all leaders have...and must have.
SecDef Rumsfeld has helped to lead a much needed change throughout our military....and not only regarding personnel, equipment and tactics....but even more importantly in attitude and philosophy.
He has help lead in fighting the most successful unconventional war in history.
Thanks for the ping.
I'm with you. And the screams from some of the retired brass tell me he is indeed making some tough decisions. Good on him!
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