Bad News
The "Economist" has some agendas and blind spots with regard to the U.S., but they generally are one of the publications I turn to confident that the commitment is more to reporting than to agenda. So their recent dour picture of the U.S. military effort in the Sunni Arab region of Iraq can't be brushed aside.
The article is behind a subscription wall, but Belgravia Dispatch has been kind enough to print extended excerpts:
As Greg at Belgravia Dispatch writes:
That's exactly what makes the whole thing such grim reading -- and the article offers no perscription for fixing it. Our armies can wage war with brilliance and force, as they proved in Iraq, and they can build or rebuild nations, as they are beginning to show us, again, in Sumatra. But to ask them to do both, at once, may be more than any group of people can accomplish.
Anyone who has studied the way good armies break down under the pressure of continued combat in civilian areas -- from Sherman's march to the Grossdeutschland division in Russia -- will hear the echoes in these quotes and attitudes.
This is Sunni Iraq, not the whole country -- but it's the crucial core of it. And difficulties now don't invalidate the removal of Saddam, but they do suggest that the current approach is doing more harm than good, and it lends more weight to the "not enough boots on the ground" argument, as well as the "don't overstay in Iraq" position.
Of course, the anti-war left is crowing in BD's comments section. As if their dismal drumbeat of doom was anything more than the broken clock's luck in being right twice a day. And even that's far from certain. It's hard to stay focused on the very serious problem of how to bring Iraq to democracy and freedom when you're being taunted like this:
There are many sides to the Iraq story; Chrenkof's "good news round-ups" are essential, but they're not the whole picture. Supporters of this war should not fall into the trap of their opponents and refuse to notice the inconvenient developments.
The article is behind a subscription wall, but Belgravia Dispatch has been kind enough to print extended excerpts:
In Ramadi, the capital of central Anbar province, where 17 suicide-bombs struck American forces during the month-long Muslim fast of Ramadan in the autumn, the marines are jumpy. Sometimes, they say, they fire on vehicles encroaching within 30 metres, sometimes they fire at 20 metres: “If anyone gets too close to us we fucking waste them,” says a bullish lieutenant. “It's kind of a shame, because it means we've killed a lot of innocent people.”
And not all of them were in cars. Since discovering that roadside bombs, known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), can be triggered by mobile telephones, marines say they shoot at any Iraqi they see handling a phone near a bomb-blast. Bystanders to an insurgent ambush are also liable to be killed. Sometimes, the marines say they hide near the body of a dead insurgent and kill whoever comes to collect it. According to the marine lieutenant: “It gets to a point where you can't wait to see guys with guns, so you start shooting everybody...It gets to a point where you don't mind the bad stuff you do.”
As Greg at Belgravia Dispatch writes:
This last sentence sounds like one of those cheap gotcha quotes one often reads in, say, the Guardian -- aimed at showcasing how brutish the Yank troops are in Iraq and how they are mucking up the effort -- an effort British forces are handling so much better, or so the story goes. But the Economist, of course, is an Americophile publication of high repute. I doubt the correspondent would have used this quote unless he felt it fairly conveyed the spirit of how U.S. forces on the front-lines are handling attempting to defend themselves amidst a vicious, unconventional guerrilla campaign.
That's exactly what makes the whole thing such grim reading -- and the article offers no perscription for fixing it. Our armies can wage war with brilliance and force, as they proved in Iraq, and they can build or rebuild nations, as they are beginning to show us, again, in Sumatra. But to ask them to do both, at once, may be more than any group of people can accomplish.
Anyone who has studied the way good armies break down under the pressure of continued combat in civilian areas -- from Sherman's march to the Grossdeutschland division in Russia -- will hear the echoes in these quotes and attitudes.
This is Sunni Iraq, not the whole country -- but it's the crucial core of it. And difficulties now don't invalidate the removal of Saddam, but they do suggest that the current approach is doing more harm than good, and it lends more weight to the "not enough boots on the ground" argument, as well as the "don't overstay in Iraq" position.
Of course, the anti-war left is crowing in BD's comments section. As if their dismal drumbeat of doom was anything more than the broken clock's luck in being right twice a day. And even that's far from certain. It's hard to stay focused on the very serious problem of how to bring Iraq to democracy and freedom when you're being taunted like this:
Wake up and smell the coffee sunshine. You are getting your buts kicked militarily as well as politically now. Your incompetent and barbaric army is taking a good kicking and lots of people are glad to see it... you have had the quickest advance into a quagmire ever... suckers
There are many sides to the Iraq story; Chrenkof's "good news round-ups" are essential, but they're not the whole picture. Supporters of this war should not fall into the trap of their opponents and refuse to notice the inconvenient developments.
