The human price of media and policy arrogance in Iraq.
By paulseale Posted in Spotlight Blogs | War — Comments (19) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
There is no other way to put this, folks: terrorist are already emboldened. They seem to already believe that America is in retreat (or that it is about to be) from what they know and believe to be a central front in the war on terrorism. The only question I have remaining is this: how many more people will die before our media and politicians get it right, and start fighting this as a war, not some sort of political game?
The conflict in Iraq is currently laced with incidents of irresponsible journalists and politicians looking for an advantage instead of focusing on obtaining victory. The cost is nothing less than hundreds - if not thousands - of lives, simply because they felt compelled to write somthing, while failing to understand or to care about the consequences of what they said.
Abu Grahib is a primary example. Immediately after the war, while things were not one hundred percent stable, they were certainly a lot better than what they are now. A friend of mine who is a contractor was in Baghdad, and he could go about the shops with no problem. There was a lot of hope and faith among Iraqis that we might be able to help them rebuild.
Read on . . .
Enter Mary Mapes, a journalist with an agenda. As a direct result of how she and other media outlets broke the Abu Grahib story, Americans lost quite a bit of trust with the Iraqi people. Some say it was a tipping point in favor of our enemies; regardless, things have certainly never been the same since.
It would have been one thing had military leaders been trying to cover up the situation; however, they were not. In fact, the incident was already under review. How many people have since died as a direct or indirect result of Mapes and the rest of our media so desiring to bring Bush down in an election year that they neither cared nor understood the potential consequences of their report? The only lasting result of the story today is the fact more people are dead because of it, and because if its' emboldening of the insurgency.
Now fast foward a few months, and insert Congressman Jack Murtha. This man steps forward and says that Iraq is no longer winnable, and that we must bring our troops home now. The media immediately gloms on to this politician with a storied career in the Marines, and hola! The media feast ensues.
Never mind that our allies in the region will begin to wonder if we are going to stick it out with them, or are going to tuck tail and run like Murtha is suggesting. While we're at it, let's also forget the results of the Somalia pull out, which Murtha also supported. Never mind what that led to, and never mind what the effects will be if we withdraw from Iraq. Again, consequences be darned!
Which brings us up to this entire election cycle. During the last year or so, all we have heard, from the media and many Democrats alike, is that Iraq is doomed, and that we must pull out - now. After all, we cannot fix it; it is an Iraqi-only problem. Not coincidentally, while the calls for our withdrawal have been increasing, attacks, both on Iraqis and on Americans, have spiked.
Our enemies read the same newspapers we do, and watch the same cable news networks we do. They pick up on the lack of resolve within the American media. Heck, CNN even recently decided to broadcast "Iraq's best sniper home videos." How much more encouraging could it be for terrorists?
And then there was last Tuesday, and the declaration that Democrats were going to force the withdrawl to begin in four to six months. Celebrations followed shortly thereafter, as Iran, Syria, Hugo Chavez, North Korea and yes, Al Qeada all simultaneously claimed victory over America in this struggle.
And that brings us to today. Our enemies are undoubtedly sensing a Spain-like defeat and a sort of impotence driven by our own media and politicians. The question is this: how many more people will die as a result of our appearance of growing weakness? How many Iraqis will pay the price because of the arrogance of our media and elected officials, who feel that they can play God, and can pull the pin out of what is unarguably holding the region together?
The average Iraqi gets it, too. They know the cost of us cutting and running all too well. In fact, many vividly recall Bush 41 calling for the overthrow of Saddam in 1991 - and then leaving them alone. The result was tens of thousands of Shiites dead. I get the impression that many do not want to go through that process again. Would you blame them?
Pre 9-11 history teaches us what the human cost will be of arrogant denial and of politically expediant choices. Are we listening? Will the end of the conflict in Iraq be on the order of a rebuilt Japan and Germany - or a 1974 redux of people fleeing Iraq for their very existence.
I cannot help but have visions of that helicopter on the roof of our embassy, and the thousands of people slaughtered during the takeover of South Vietnam. God help the Iraqis if we follow through with a plan which does not account for what is honestly happening on the ground. God help us once the terrorists follow us home.
I'm confused - who's responsible for the Abu Grahib scandal? The person reporting it or the people DOING it? A bedrock conservative principle - personal responsibility, seems to be at at stake, here. Whether the American people were aware of the abuses at Abu Grahib didn't change the fact that the Iraqis were aware of it - without our media's help. The perception was created by the folks perpretrating the abuses, not those reporting it to the American people. What we do with that information becomes our responsibility.
This is probably a waste of time, but it must be said:
The military had already received reports of the abuse and had begun the investigation. After the investigation, the perpetrators were punished. There's your personal responsibility.
What we got inserted into the narrative was an MSM narrative explaining how our military guys were nothing but a bunch of animals and our illustrious Senator Kennedy asserting that Abu Graib was 'open under new management' implying that we were the equivalent of Saddam.
The Iraqis have never lived with a free media, let alone a free treasonous media. This screwed up their previous notions that freedom at the hands of the Americans was a good thing.
Thanks a lot Mary. And you didn't even get John Kerry for your efforts.
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.
Let me start off by saying you are correct. Those who needed to have been held accountable should have been. No ifs ands or buts about it. The law is the law and there is no excuse for breaking it.
The perception, though, was not solely created by the people doing the abuses. Our media could have very well portrayed it as what it was - an isolated incident.
Instead what do we get to this day? We accusations of American soliders torturing our captives which is patently false. Why? Because they (the media) seek political gain and have an agenda.
The media should have been more responsible than to plaster the report every where. The incident served as a recruiting tool and a wedge between many Iraqis and us.
The cost of that irresponsbility has been lives. The question I am asking here is how many more lives will be lost because of that same arrogant thinking in policy and media.
...the irresponsibility of not listening to the Generals in the first place (remember Shineski?), not preparing plans for post-war affairs, sending twenty-somethings to a sort of internship to rebuild and run a country etc. etc. that seems to me a minor and downstream issue.
We should not buy into the notion that blunder is acceptable as long as it is not reported. We should go back to an approach of avoiding blunder in the first place and then enjoy the positive news afterwards.
Shinkseki was one of many Generals. Some said this, some said that. No one knew then who was right, and no one knows today. If Shinseki's guess had been accepted instead of someone else's, would things would have turned out any differently? No one knows. Perhaps Shinseki was too low by another 100,000.
The people who today hail Shinkseki as some sort of genius who knew the future in advance are empty minds who want to sound smart. No matter what unfortunate outcome confronts humans, we can always find a memo from somebody warning of it. So what. Beating people up with hindsight is the joyous pursuit of the insignificant.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
"... just another General ... some said this, some said that ... no one knows ..."
Give me a break! What about a little planning before going to war, where presumably the fate of Western Civilization hinges upon? This guy was Army Chief of Staff and I guess he didn't completely pick that number out of thin air.
"Perhaps he was too low by another 100,000".
Pardon me?! Do you mean we still have no clue about the neccessary troop strength? Come on - there is discussion here about reinvigorating the mission, having the president set the goal of the mission and stick to it etc. etc. How can we assume that the planning for that mission will be any better, when it seems that no one's willing to face the blunder of the past.
another freakin know-nothing.
No, he pulled the number out of his fourth point of contact. Shinseki was rather alone in his assessment and for good reason. There is no doctrinal number concerning the "number of troops."
Not that it matters but the service chiefs have not been involved in war planning beyond providing trained units to the combatant commanders, formerly regional CINCs, since the Goldwater-Nichols Act became law in 1986.
Shinseki may or may not have been right but the reason he gave that answer was to stick his finger in Rumsfeld's eye because Rumsfeld had made him a lame duck by announcing his successor six months previously.
FWIW I haven't seen much good from "RandomGuyFromGermany". Given his comments I would rather refer to him as RandomGuyFromFrance, but that's just me.
"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" - Defoe
- Pardon me?! Do you mean we still have no clue about the neccessary troop strength?
That's right, we don't.
Serious question: Have you ever done anything the least bit significant in your life? I ask because those who have tend to understand that no one ever knows these kinds of things. Humans do not know the future in advance. Get it?
How many dollars do we need to spend on advertising to make this new movie a success? No one knows. How many iPods should Apple tell the plant to make for 1Q07? They don't know. How many troops do we need to secure Iraq? We don't know. That's because Ahmadinejad is asking his guys, "How many infiltrators do we need to send in this month?" and they don't know.
The whole world works on guesses. Get used to having most of them be wrong, most of the time. Sometimes by a lot. People who claim that sufficiently good planning can eliminate human error are exposing themselves as people who have never done anything. Or are useless, professional carpers.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
Franks, et al were correct in their initial assesment of what was needed to defeat the Iraqi army. They knew and understood what was needed to confront and defeat it.
They would have been correct about the mop up operations had there been no Abu Grahib or incidents like it.
Remember, the idea was to keep a small foot print in Iraq so they wouldnt see us as occupiers. We were not until Abu Grahib and Al Sadr started his bit with the backing of Iran.
At that point We should have looked at upping the troop levels perhaps, but again, I would defer to generals who are actually fighting the war on the ground.
Lets say we doubled the number of troops we put in.
What are the consequences of that decision.
1. The cost for the war goes up by more than double per month.
2. We have to strip troops from other parts of the world meaning we now have the opportunity for other problems.
3. The insurgents now have twice as many targets.
4. Their are now twice as many people in Iraq to screw up and be recorded on film doing so.
Whats the upside.
1. We can improve the amount of people we bring to bear against the insurgents. (Well we allready win every fight we get into with these people so the point is ?)
2. We have more people to hunt for the insurgents. (yes but the Iraqis do it much better than we do)
3. We would have more people to train the Iraqi army faster. This is a good thing but we had to do it outside the country in the beginning.
What was needed more than more troops ?
A willingness to tune out the Media and be properly ruthless. Al Sadr should have been taken out the minute he peeped up and Falujah should have been leveled in the first battle.
wisdom and play armchair CINKs before finally getting to their, "Oh yeah and we must win" with the word "win" obscured by the commercial break warning music of a screaming lib, the enemy might have been given some pause over the last three years. Our own people, esp McCain, accept the whole MSM line and work their resolve around it, with the main dialogue being how we could have had a bloodless quick war if only they had done it my way. Oh yeah, and when appearing live with defeatist dems, they never suggest that maybe the enemy hears the dem and fights on in hopes that the dems get the power to quit.
http://gamecock.townhall.com and www.race42008.com
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
Pardon me, but no one really seems to know what they mean when they glibly say the US could "win" if only we...fill in the blank.
What is winning in Iraq?
What has happened is that the US has won every battle, but it looks very likely that it will lose the war not because of the MSM, but because we don't know what we're doing. There was a reason why the President's father did not send troops on to Baghdad back in the Gulf War: it was because Iraq is such a divided country that he knew that if we threw out Saddam (who he had compared to Hitler) then we would be faced with precisely the kind of chaos and incipient civil war that we are now facing.
And now, supporting the "unity government" of Iraq, we are stuck actually supporting one side of a sectarian conflict: the Shiites, who control the government and want to lord it over the Sunnis, who had lorded it over them under Saddam, and back for the last 1000 years.
So, what's the solution?
Not, I think, to blindly support the Shiite dominated government. The government wants us to stay, because they think that with our help they can dominate the Sunnis.
According to the polls, over 70% of Iraqis want us to leave.
If we stay to buttress the government, the result will only be even higher rates of violence on all sides, because the Sunnis are not going to capitulate, and even without aid from Iran and Syria, Iraq is so awash in weapons that the Sunnis can fight on for years. And they raise money with crime, drugs and the stolen revenues from blackmarket oil; they're self-sufficient.
The US still has leverage: our troops, money and materiel and we need to use this leverage to force all sides to negotiate with each other (except the lunatic al Qaeda fringe, which also wants us to stay: that's how they recruit more fighters). We need to make clear to all sides that we are not going to support any side that attempts to dominate the others, and that if they don't come to agreement on real constitutional guarantees for all minorities, and fair share of all oil revenues (the Shiites and Kurds want to keep them for themselves) they will have to fight it out and we can't help them.
That, I think would be victory: to get the Iraqis to stop fighting each other, to agree to work together, and to create the basis for a peaceful settlement.
Douglas
h ttp://www.roman-empire-america-now.com
government, the "sides" are the freely elected government of the people vs the enemies trying to overthrow that government or trying to make us leave before the government is so strong and its forces so dominant that they cannot be overthrown.
Should Sunnis leave the government to join in with Saddam's deadenders and terrorists to oppose the government, we should continue to support the government, just as we supported South Korea against the commie north in a civil war.
Americans still fight each other. See the DC murder rate which is half the rate in Baghdad. Half-way to civil war in DC? Should we still support the DC police?
www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com
The few there are have been bullied and terrorized out of their positions of putative power. How long do you think they'll last after events like the wholesale kidnapping of the Sunni-controlled Education Department?
Supporting the government in Baghdad, which either looks the other way, or actively supports the Shiite death squads and militias carrying out sectarian cleansing, would be more parallel to our support of the kaleidoscope of governments we supported in Vietnam after Ngo Dinh Diem. The government of Baghdad's writ runs large--in the Green Zone. It can't even maintain control in Baghdad. Even Nuyen(sp?)Cao Ky could more or less control Saigon--with our help. Maliki can't even do that--with our help.
So, would you have us single-handedly maintain this faction of the civil war and do you really think that we can gain "victory" this way?
We don't have enough troops to close down the country, which is what it would take just to stop the violence between groups. It wouldn't be enough to actually help Iraqis rebuild their country.
Your parallel with DC is spurious, and you know it. One hundred thousand people are leaving Iraq every week, because of the violence there. Are people leaving DC? Furthermore, are the murders in DC motivated by ethnic hatred? Most, from what I've read are black on black.
Sorry. You haven't made your case. And anyone who thinks the US can prevail in Iraq must have been smoking some funny stuff. All we'll accomplish by staying is to contribute to the violence and to anti-Americanism not only there, but throughout the Middle East. Soon we'll make it impossible for Muslim moderates in the region, and we'll only help al Qaeda recruit more desperate men--and a few women--to their extremist cause. A cause, by the way, that was rejected by 99% of Muslims, until our President gave it credence as The Enemy in the GWOT.
Douglas
h ttp://www.roman-empire-america-now.com
The only question is when the U.S. realizes that we can send in all the troops we have and it won't bring peace of stability.
Kicking the Iraqi army to hell was easy. Running their country for them, rebuilding it, and getting them to live together?
No one, including the U.S. is going to bring peace and stability there.
It's time to stop talking in terms of defeat, or victory, and just walk away.
Just walk away. We beat up their army, we killed Saddam and his sons, we gave them a real chance at self government.
If they won't take the chance we have given them, we should walk away.
Whether you like it or not, Iraq is part of the larger war on terror. There is no walking away. We either win or we loose. If we "walk away", then A.Q. will declare victory. They will use it to recruit more terrorist. Governments sitting on the fense will know that we cannot be trusted and they will cut under-the-table deals with A.Q. Even if you believed it was not part of the war on terror at the beginning, it is now. If we leave, it becomes what Afganistan was and, sooner or later, we will have to go back. When we do, we will loose twice as many soldiers (if we are lucky).
And we need to acknowledge that it was partially achieved last Tuesday.
I never believed anything remotely democratic would emerge in Iraq. However, after WMD weren't found it presented a great opportunity to engage and eliminate al-Qaeda terrorists. Yes, that was an afterthought, but it was a fantastic side benefit. Our troops have been heroic, honorable and successful. You wouldn't know that to be the case if all information was received via the tube, though.
The MSM has convinced the American people all is wrong and lost, and they have responded as intelligent people who believe such a thing would be expected to do. The Democrats want to pull the plug but not receive the blame. The Administration has shown little resolve to engage or confront the opposition.
I think we are at a point where we have to do our best not to leave a failed state (if that is possible), take out as many terrorists as politically possible in the interim, and bring the troops back. We have to acknowledge the political reality: our troops won the initial fight, and the MSM propaganda lost the aftermath. Media bias cannot be discounted in the future whenever the military option is considered.