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Where Did Iraq Go?
Guest Column | By Nicholas Guariglia | June 4, 2008
Violence
in Iraq has reached a four-year low. The U.S. casualty rate is now 0.72
deaths per day, constituting the eighth month in a row of dramatic
improvements as compared to the 4.2 deaths per day from this time last
year. Iraqi civilian deaths, too, are down. For some perspective, the
monthly murder tolls in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City were
48.7, 51.9, and 49.3 a few years ago. Today, less than 400 Iraqi
citizens - throughout the whole country, not just a few cities - perish on a monthly basis. And this is a war zone.
I
guess it could be said that from '03-'06, the international press and
the mainstream media did not report the "good news" from Iraq because
good news was scarce. Outside of some brave freelancers, most reporters
stayed safe in their Baghdad hotels and reported only on explosions
from afar, which were known about only because of an ever-quick
newswire.
In the past few months, however, many of our friends in
the Western press have exposed to us something worse than blatant bias:
we're seeing a barefaced misunderstanding and miscomprehension of what
is happening on the ground in-theater. The recent skirmishes in Basra,
and the more recent crackdown in Mosul, have served as an example of
this phenomenon.
Last June, Reuters reported that 20 decapitated
Iraqi bodies were found near Salman Pak. They quoted unnamed sources to
confirm the validity of this supposed massacre. Later that week, it was
concluded that the story was false.
In October, Mark Kukis of Time,
rushing to meet his required deadline, also told the world that 20
"headless" bodies were found in Baquba. Later that day, Maj. Winfield
Danielson confirmed that the story was entirely untrue.
In April,
Kukis reported that Muqtada al Sadr's "political power appears to be
growing." By May, it is now clear that Kukis should consider membership
to the Flat Earth Society.
The New York Times, never
failing to disappoint, almost gleefully reported that one of the main
Sunni blocs in the Iraqi parliament - Adnan Dulaimi's "Tawafiq" bloc -
would extend its year-long boycott of the government. What the Times failed to acknowledge was that the Iraqi government, just the other
day, applied amnesty laws to certain Iraqi politicians accused of
wrongdoing. Dulaimi, who is charged of "terrorism," did not qualify for
such amnesty; two points the paper failed to mention.
In gets
weirder: the ever-prestigious Associated Press reporters Hamza Hendawi
and Qassim Abdul-Zahra put out a strange narrative hinting that
Ayatollah Sistani, whose support the U.S. couldn't have done without,
will just out-of-the-blue declare "Jihad" against the U.S. in the
coming days. (Sistani's aides are, obviously, denying this ludicrous
story.)
I'm going to go out on a limb: Sistani will not declare
jihad on anyone. And Hendawi and Abdul-Zahra will not have to clarify
their baloney of a press release.
Misrepresentations of this
sort, whether unintentional or duplicitous, happen every day. Keen
followers of Iraq can pick them out as they read various reports,
papers, and articles. If you are an interested observer of what is
happening in Iraq, and you receive your primary sources of information
from Mark Kukis, Juan Cole, the Reuters and Associated Press newswire,
the New York Times, or Jack Cafferty's old man rants on CNN, you will walk away with a not-too-very astute impression of the country.
As
this is written, Operation Calvary Charge in Basra was a stunning
success for Iraq's premier Nouri Maliki, and the Iraqi military,
against Iranian instrumentalities. Normalcy is returning to that
troubled city, where in the past crazed Iranian-backed theocrats - both
associated with Sadr and separate from him - would enforce ridiculous
and puritanical laws on Basra's citizenry, particularly women. And yet,
if you had picked up a paper in March, you would have come to the
conclusion that Maliki was on the verge of resigning, at the least,
and, at the most, seeking exile Shah-style, somewhere far, far away
from his home state.
Like in Basra, Maliki's war cabinet is
traveling to Mosul - al Qaeda's last urban bastion in Iraq. Between
flushing al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) out of its final stronghold, and
contemplating forming his own political bloc, Maliki is traveling to a
UN conference in Sweden to get countries to forgive Iraq of its debt.
As
the dust settles in Basra, and as the facts begin to emerge out of
Mosul and Sadr City - where the Iraqi government has, for the first
time, established a domineering presence - the media's hysteria begins
to fade away. Just what happened to those predictions that declared
Maliki toast? Will those in the press who swore Basra a failure in
March be held to account for their sub-par journalism and near-insane
neglect of actuality?
With the exception of some obviously
inaccurate news stories, reporting on Iraq is seemingly nonexistent
nowadays. Nobody is having a serious intellectual discourse about the
improvements made, and the challenges that rest ahead; we're not even
talking about how we're not talking about it.
Here are the facts:
Across the country, Shi'ite tribes have turned on Iranian-backed
Shi'ite militias, and Sunni tribes have turned on AQI. Iraqi servicemen
are performing remarkably well, and distinctly better than last year.
Maliki has never been this politically empowered.
After the
Iraqi military finishes off al Qaeda in Mosul, AQI will be without a
home in Iraq. Al Qaeda honchos are the first to acknowledge the state
of their affairs, writing a dismal portrayal of their hopes on Al-Ekhlaas,
a website sympathetic to and organized by the terror group. In the
testimony - written by the pseudonym "Dir'a limen wehhed," or "Shield
for the Monotheist" - al Qaeda admits that it orchestrated 334 attacks
in November '06, 292 attacks in May '07, just 25 attacks in November
'07, and has only managed 16 assaults in May '08.
Another year or
two of this sustained pressure, and our strategic gains will be
irreversible... if they are not already. Western journalists and
reporters are missing the biggest story to ever come out of this
terrible conflict: Iraqis are on the verge of crossing a threshold.
They're going to make it.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Nicholas Guariglia is a polemic and essayist who writes on Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitics. He is a student at the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he is studying U.S. foreign policy. He also contributes to http://www.globalpolitician.com and http://www.worldthreats.com He can be reached at
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
4 Comments | Post a Comment
I appreciate article like this because I educate myself on the subject and feel like I have an intellectual understanding. I think the negative press gets more attention because it is written on a lower reading and education level. If those of us who wish the best for the Iraqis and are capable of writing would remember to lower the language barrier to say - 5th grade- maybe we could gain in the area of public opinion. It’s just a thought.
Thank you Mr. Guariglia. Good news is not news, unfortunately. Neverthelss, there is no excuse for the lack of thoughtful analysis of the Iraq situation in the mainstream media.
I am hopeful, too, for the future success of Iraq, as are increasing numbers of Americans, I believe, regardless of media bias (November’s election will be the real test of this).
General David Petraeus is right up there with Ulysses S. Grant in my book! At least, he will be if he writes his memoirs some day.
Finally…I had almost given up hope on Journalists, et al, and their bias. I think the damage bias has done is irreversible…and the majority of people don’t even realize they’ve been influenced by bias. I’ve been to Iraq, and every ‘biased person’ I hear has made up their opinion from biased news and have never been to the country. When I tell them what I’ve seen and my experience, it doesn’t matter. What comes back to me is hate and liberal parroting from the biased news.
I hope many people get to read this article…but I bet it won’t make news.
June 6 at 7:46 pm | #1 | Link
Well done Mr. Guariglia !