As for Iraq's woes, is this news?

Sometimes it irks me how there seem to be simple explanations and solutions for problems to which the federal government seems despairingly to throw up its hands in the air. Sometimes it infuriates me when the media follows suit.

 

On December 12, during his final interview before passing the torch, Lt. General Peter Chiarelli—ground commander of U.S. forces in Iraq this past year—explained why he proposed increasing the “emphasis on jobs and reconstruction,” rather than the administration’s plan for escalating troop levels. “If I could drive down unemployment in this country just to something that was reasonable, or if other people could help me drive unemployment down here, I promise you, our casualty figures would not be as high. Nor would the level of violence be as high as it is today” (TIME, “Would a Troop Surge in Iraq Work?.” December 20, 2006).

 

Mark Kukis, the TIME writer from whom this quote is pilfered, immediately follows this with an anecdote regarding the kidnapping of some 70 people in Sanak two days later. “No employment program can stop what happened that day in Sanak,” Mr Kukis writes. He then moves on to describe success stories, wherein the American military—through the use of massive checkpoints and constant patrols—temporarily reduced the number of sectarian murders in small areas.

 

It seems to me that Mr Kukis is as lacking in foresight as the military and civilian leadership which he covers. Of course, he is correct in a quite literal sense on both counts. In the former case, if we wish to view the incident as an isolated, atomic event, new policies encouraging entrepreneurial investment would probably not have an immediate effect. In the latter case, effectively reducing all travel and commerce to a halt through the implementation of a DMZ blockade will probably reduce the opportunity to kill people—along with the opportunity to do anything else, period. To speak in this manner about troop levels and policy is to repeat the same impressive foresight illustrated by such hallowed titans of prescience as Paul Bremer (who disbanded the Iraqi army) or Paul Wolfowitz (who testified before Congress that Iraq had no history of ethnic strife). It flies in the face of expert, learned opinions concerning the region and its woes. (Similar to the apparently liberal-conjured fear-mongering experts who decried drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge for unproven and, according to estimates, relatively small oil reserves. The GOP claims that this would improve our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil, even though once green-lighted the crude would take incredible amounts of cash as well as ten full years to reach American pumps. Meanwhile, the long-term effects to worldwide biodiversity would be irreversible and devastating.)

 

Incidentally, although Mr Kukis’ article begins with a question, it does not make any attempt to answer the question—or even to present anything beyond tautologies (e.g., “American troops exercise a broad measure of authority on the streets of Baghdad they claim”) and a “damned if you do…” (e.g., “It’s a dilemma… much of the fighting in Ramadi and other places continues because of the American presence, not in spite of it.”). General Chiarelli’s plea receives no further attention in the article, as if its sole value lies in grabbing the reader’s attention with a ridiculous or humorous introduction.

 

I’m not against the troop increase. Indeed, I’m still among the ever-decreasing weirdoes who believes that we should not pull out of Iraq—a group that reduces to a dozen-or-so retarded persons when you remember that I tend to caucus with liberal-types. That is not the point; I’d be happy to agree or disagree with a considered response to the question of troop surges. Yet this type of reporting—which gives the less than careful reader the illusion of information, while merely reinforcing her own preconceptions as to what is wrong with Iraq—fuels the same ignorant-yet-passionate mobs which have been at each other’s throats since the beginning of this debacle.

 

I used to think that the answer to all life’s problems was to require logic courses in all schools from day one. Unfortunately, this is the same elitist position which leads such august publications as TIME to preclude worthwhile work while replacing it with tripe such as this—alongside “Time’s Person of the Year: You.” If I’ve learned anything from teaching, it is that your students will always meet your expectations, however high or low they may be. Maybe if the big guys like TIME respected their readers by giving them real information (and, in the process, performing their duties as the Fourth Estate), we could expect more from Congress (and, in the process, discharge our duties as citizens of a democracy). Wouldn’t it be nice to see those on the Hill driven not just by their sense of political survival, but also by considered principle? Can’t these two align?

 

Or am I really just retarded?

 

-W.