Situation in Iraq

Jack Kelly: Perspective, please
The situation in Iraq is much better than we are told

Sunday, September 28, 2003








The commentary by Doug Saunders of Toronto's Globe and Mail began in a
fashion familiar to readers and viewers of the Western news media:



Six months before, the world had cheered as the statues of the
dictator came crashing down. The Americans had seemed heroic. But now
things were going very badly. The occupation was chaotic, the American
soldiers were hated and they were facing threats from the surviving
supporters of the dictator, whose whereabouts were uncertain.

"Washington seemed unwilling to pay the enormous bill for
reconstruction, and the president didn't appear to have any kind of
workable plan to manage the transition to democracy. European allies,
distrustful of the arrogant American outlook, were wary of
cooperating."

Saunders was writing not of Iraq in September 2003. He was writing
about Germany in November, 1945. His article provided something rare
in the news media today: perspective.

Biased, unbalanced news accounts are giving Americans a false picture
of what is going on in Iraq, and are harming our prospects of creating
a democracy there, said U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall after a visit to that
country.

The news media "are dwelling upon the mistakes, the ambushes, the
soldiers killed, the wounded," Marshall said. "Fair enough. But it is
not balancing this bad news with the rest of the story, the progress
made daily, the good news. The falsely bleak picture weakens our
national resolve, discourages Iraqi cooperation and emboldens our
enemy."

Marshall's comments could be written off as just another Republican
defense of the embattled president. Except that Marshall, from
Georgia, is a Democrat, one of the few in the Copperhead party to put
the welfare of the country ahead of short-term partisan advantage.

"Outside of Baghdad, things really aren't as bad as they look on the
news," UPI defense correspondent Pamela Hess said in an interview last
week with C-SPAN upon her return from Iraq. "Now, naturally on the
news, we're going to focus on where the troubles are, because that's
what makes news. But there are places in Iraq where things are going
pretty well. You can't say 'just fine' because the power is down,
there is no phone service, but things are pretty peaceful. People are
patient and are slowly rebuilding things back together."

This month I covered the return to Pittsburgh from Iraq of a Marine
reserve military police company. These Marines made the march to
Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division, and spent the bulk of the
postwar period escorting convoys between Basra and Najaf. Each of the
seven Marines I interviewed said that more than 90 percent of the
Iraqis they encountered were friendly.

The accounts of these Marines square with those of most other
servicemen returned from Iraq, and with my own experiences as a
reporter embedded with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in western
Iraq, and with the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad. But it's a story
you hardly ever hear on the evening news.

Iraq is a dangerous place. Saddam Hussein is still at large, as are
thousands of his diehard supporters. They've been joined by hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of foreign terrorists. Though these "insurgents"
cannot challenge the U.S. military for control of any part of the
country, they'll be able to conduct remote ambushes and terror
bombings for months to come.

But viewed in historical perspective, things in Iraq are pretty good,
and getting better. The insurgents are a tiny -- and dwindling --
minority. Most of the country is at peace. Nobody is starving. Signs
of reviving economic activity are everywhere. In no country in the
Arab world are Americans as popular as they are in Iraq.

Contrast this with Germany in November 1945: "Six months after VE Day,
The New York Times reported that Germany was awash in unrest and
lawlessness," Saunders wrote. "More than a million displaced persons
roamed the country, many of them subsisting on criminal activities."

Iraq hasn't been transformed into Switzerland in less than six months.
No reasonable person ever expected that it could be. But an
unrealizable ideal should not obscure the significant progress that
has been made.


Hero@Horvath.net

Ave Imperator Bush!
Bush Was Right! Four More Years!