HERE’S ANOTHER FIRSTHAND REPORT FROM IRAQ saying that things are better than the Big Media coverage makes them sound.
But Big Media is catching on. Here’s a story from the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Jonathan Rauch writes:
Consistently, however, observers — including some I know personally and trust — return from Iraq reporting that the picture up close is better than the images in the media. Michael O’Hanlon, a Brookings Institution military analyst who is no pushover for the Bush administration, recently came back saying that the quality of the work being done in Iraq by American forces is “stunning.”
If the future in Iraq looks dismal, someone forgot to tell the Iraqis. A poll by the Gallup Organization found Iraqis saying, by a 2-to-1 ratio, that Saddam Hussein’s ouster was worth the subsequent hardships. A plurality told Gallup (a month ago, when the poll was taken) that Iraq was worse off than before the invasion, but two-thirds expected Iraq to be better off in five years than before the invasion, and only 8 percent expected it to be worse off.
The Bush administration reports that “virtually all” major Iraqi hospitals and universities have been reopened, and hundreds of schools have been rebuilt. As of late September, American fatalities (just over 300), although too numerous, were still only slightly higher than the 293 lost in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The bad reasons for viewing this mixed but by no means disastrous situation as a nightmare, a quagmire, or a failure have to do with the fact that a lot of people — some Europeans, some doves, some partisans — want President Bush or America or both to fail. Partly that is a result of rancor and opportunism, but it also inheres in a pre-emptive engagement. A war to prevent war is bound to be controversial, and this one created a constituency against itself.
Read the whole thing. And also read this piece entitled “America’s Unheralded Victory:”
From the soldiers’ perspective, the main US failure in Iraq to date has little to do with the situation on the ground. The main failure is the inability to transmit the reality they experienced daily to the American people.
“Our biggest mistake was letting go of the embedded media,” says 2-7 executive officer Maj. Kevin Cooney.
“After the embedded reporters left, the reports coming out had no context. The reporters didn’t understand the situation. They had no sense of what was actually going on and they didn’t seem to care. They acted like ambulance chasers moving from one attack against US soldiers to the next without giving any sense of the work that was being accomplished,” says Maj. Rod Coffey.
And here’s another piece, this one from The Observer, along the same lines:
Visceral distrust of Bush/Blair has created a disregard both for fact and for the victims of Saddam. . . . Western commentators have luxuriated in the setbacks of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), as if wishing failure upon it – and by extension, the Iraqi people. . . .
In the summer I spent more than a month in Iraq. What I found did not correspond to what was being reported – most crucially, that the liberators were already widely denounced as occupiers. As a rule, that simply wasn’t true. In Baghdad, where US forces had permitted looting (although not as much as reported) and where security and services were virtually non-existent, attitudes towards the Americans were mixed. But even in Baghdad, even with Saddam and his sons still at large, the sense of relief at the toppling of the regime was palpable.
Yes. I’d say that the case that media reporting from Iraq was too negative through the summer is now pretty solid.