Contrary to what you’ll read in the New York Times, or hear on NPR radio, or see on CNN, Iraq is not on the brink of civil war. Nope, just the opposite. Ralph Peters writes in the New York Post…
Rolling with the “instant Infantry” gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.
All day – and it was a long day – we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.
And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.
Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward.
Not what you expected right? Me neither. Why isn’t the truth being reported? Peters says that some have staked their reputations on Iraq’s failure, and that comes across in their reporting.
But there’s no way we can let irresponsible journalists off the hook – or their parent organizations. Many journalists are, indeed, brave and conscientious; yet some in Baghdad – working for “prestigious” publications – aren’t out on the city streets the way they pretend to be.
They’re safe in their enclaves, protected by hired guns, complaining that it’s too dangerous out on the streets. They’re only in Baghdad for the byline, and they might as well let their Iraqi employees phone it in to the States. Whenever you see a column filed from Baghdad by a semi-celeb journalist with a “contribution” by a local Iraqi, it means this: The Iraqi went out and got the story, while the journalist stayed in his or her room.
And the Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don’t pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad.
Now THAT I believe! Remember that story that ran wildly last week about 1,300 bodies in a Baghdad morgue? An exaggeration not fully confirmed by the professionals.
I remember when Arthur Chrenkoff used to run his “Good News from Iraq” stories. Those ended, but there’s another site that continues where he left off. Good News Central covers ‘the rest of the story’ and it’s worth a read. Don’t let the New York Times be the last word on Iraq.