Iraq Tide Turns
Yesterday Larry Kudlow asked me about John Burns’ March 21 NY Times cover story. Essentially, Kudlow asked if Burns’ report meant that “the tide had turned” in Iraq. My reply– I thought we had the tide turned (had it won, actually) in July 2004, but then I was serving with Multi-National Corps-Iraq.
That same month John Burns and I had a long and fascinating conversation. We met in the Palace of the Republic and sat in a corner of the entrance room on a marble bench. We chatted about the military in general, the US and British military in particular, and we talked a lot about Iraq and where it might be going. We also talked about how hard it is to report from dictatorships as well as war zones. John may be the world’s leading authority on reporting from hard corners and hell holes, and in my view he’s the world’s top foreign correspondent
He’s a writer with courage and integrity (and I’ve written and said that, in several venues). After Iraq’s January elections Burns acknowledged on the PBS News Hour that he had been pessimistic about the coalition’s effort in Iraq. That’s welcome self-critique, and typical of John Burns.
John Burns’ March 21 Haifa Street story describes some of the perceptible changes in public attitude on Haifa Street he’s noticed since the end of January.
I think Saddam’s holdouts focused on Haifa Street because it was (1) in Baghdad and (2) close to the hotels and compounds where international reporters live. Stage a fight on Haifa Street, cop a headline. It was a tough drag and dangerous– and yes, I’ve driven a good stretch of it, in July 2004 as a matter of fact. I was with a convoy and traveling in an armored HMMV. Traffic was light and I saw few people — but then the afternoon temperature had spiked to 125 degrees. “Who goes out in the noonday sun?” When it’s that hot, perhaps even terrorists take a siesta.
no news is good news……especially about iraq
Comment by ted da-swimma — 3/22/2005 @ 8:58 am
I agree about Burns. You get the impression his work isn’t driven by the home office agenda, unlike the hotel journalists trading pessimism at the bar.
Comment by Jerry — 3/22/2005 @ 12:33 pm
I sincrely hope the insurgency in Iraq is coming to an end. Personally I would be very guarded in making predictions because these things seem to ebb and wane. Certainly proclamations of success in Vietnam added to public disillusion. Tet occured after we’d announced the enemy could not carry out a major offensive. And while it is true that it did break NLF military power in many parts of the south, a very hot war continued as the NVA became more central. Even without the insurgency Iraq would have major problems. The Kurd listing of demands illustrates the differences between various, often heavily armed interest groups. The difficulties of this is seen in Sadr. A year ago we declaredd him a criminal, now he has represenatives in the government and his thugs are still running loose in a number of placesA In contrast to ted I think some disturbing news has come out in the past week. This is the report on corruption. This, criminality, a collapsed infrastructure all make the conditions exceedingly difficult. It has often taken many countries decades or even centuries of attempting democracy and a modern state to achieve it. If (god willing) the insurgency is broken then the difficulties remain immense. And “immense” is not simply a word that we overcome with optimistic projections. We have a history of underestimating the difficulties there. Rumsfelld admits this. Yet on the right this is denied and it seems to me the process continues. I believe people like you increase the prospect of failure because you are so caught up in this permissive feel good now, pretend problems don’t exist rather than facing them mentality.
Comment by lize connors — 3/22/2005 @ 1:59 pm
Just because there are problems - for goodness sake there are problems here in the USA - doesn’t mean that the good news is any less good. It’s not burying one’s head in the sand to celebrate successes.
Comment by mrsizer — 3/22/2005 @ 2:16 pm
My challenge to reporters: Get out in the street, or get out of Baghdad. The sloppy, lazy, cynical reporting coming out of Iraq seems to clash squarely with U.S. soldiers both returning home and blogging in Country. Get out and find the story. Risk your life. Or just go home to the upper west side.
Comment by Jim Gordon — 3/22/2005 @ 2:49 pm
I agree with mrsizer, a nation is always ‘under construction’. There is much to work out, there will always be much to work out. But now the Iraqi people have the chance to work things out sans interference. The day will come when Iraq will be on its own. Hell, the day may come when Iraq and America are enemies again. But at least we gave them a chance to prosper. We’re imperfect, so anything we do can never be truly perfect. We can but try. And sometimes in our failures we presage greater triumphs than if we’d succeeded the first time. It is better to try and fail than never to have tried at all.
Comment by Alan Kellogg — 3/22/2005 @ 2:54 pm
I’m always amazed as to how many people speak of the war in Iraq as if it’s just an ordinary policy decision like social security or health care. It’s much more than that. The President’s plan is to shake up the Middle East (not a new reason for the war as the NYT asserts but one repeated over and over prior to the war) and bring orderly change to a very corrupt land. In so doing we avoid catastrophes of biblical proportions including the detonation of one or many WMD in an American or Western city and the follow up of destruction of Arabic or Islamic cities and the enormous blow on the world economy. That in turn begs the question as to the standard of care that any person opposed to the President’s plans has. Should a an anti-war be able to protest to his or her heart’s content? And if yes, then what happens when good things result in Iraq? What if stock piles of WMD are found in Syria? What if the seeds of democracy take root in Iraq and spread throughout the Middle East, bringing peace, stability, tolerance, and coooperation to a region that had nothing but hurt and despair for decades? What about those who so strongly oppose these efforts?
Comment by Ron Wright — 3/22/2005 @ 4:28 pm
I have not, and will not forgive Burns for this fiasco: Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure, The New York Times, April 13, 2003, By JOHN F. BURNS
As far as I am concerned, it showed that he was just another stooge for the house organ of the elite liberalism, the NYTimes.
Comment by Robert Schwartz — 3/22/2005 @ 8:31 pm