BAGHDAD — I’m sorry for not post­ing more. Still some latent server trou­bles. But I have to address an issue: Ralph Peters, who is cur­rently traips­ing around Bagh­dad with the 506^th Infantry Reg­i­ment 1^st Pla­toon of Bravo Bat­tery, 4 – 320 Field Artillery, is, to be blunt, full of shit.
He’s cur­rently a “favorite”:http://www.google.com/search?q=ralph%20peters of the pro-war set, who say we reporters have “agen­das” to under­mine the troops and get our civil war on, ’cause, you know, that makes Bush look bad… or some­thing.
(A quick note on the above link: it’s all con­ser­v­a­tive pub­li­ca­tions. Why is it I, a pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ist, get tarred with a “lib­eral” brush when I have never, ever writ­ten for Mother Jones, the Nation or Granta, etc. But polemi­cists who spend the all their ener­gies crank­ing out pieces for the National Review, Front Page and the New York Post some­how don’t get called “con­ser­v­a­tives” but instead are “truth tellers”? Such a mys­tery.)
Among the claims in his slan­der­ous col­umn: “The Iraqi Army has con­founded its West­ern crit­ics, per­form­ing extremely well last week. And the peo­ple trust their new army to an encour­ag­ing degree.“
The Iraqi Army — and police, for that mat­ter — stood by while Shi’ite mili­tias ran ram­pant through Sunni neigh­bor­hoods. They only took up the secu­rity posi­tions when the Shi’ite cler­ics, includ­ing Moq­tada al-Sadr, had already calmed down the worst of the vio­lence. That’s not “per­form­ing extremely well,” unless by “extremely well,” you mean not con­fronting the ene­mies and keep­ing your head down until it’s safe to come out. That’s usu­ally called “hid­ing.“
He also says we west­ern reporters don’t get out on the streets, which is patently untrue. I don’t get out as often as I’d like, but I do get out. My col­leagues at TIME, who look much less west­ern than I do, get out much more. And, unlike Peters, we don’t travel with a big-ass armed con­voy under the pro­tec­tion of the U.S. mil­i­tary.
He then fur­ther slan­ders Ellen Knick­meyer, of the _Washington Post_, when he says, “Did any West­ern reporter go to that morgue and count the bod­ies — a rough count would have done it — before telling the world the news? I doubt it.“
Well, actu­ally, Ralph, I know Ellen. And yes, she did go down to the morgue. While there are many issues with her story, what is unde­ni­able is that she risked a hell of a lot more than you did when she put her life in jeop­ardy to go down there.
Then he says, “If reporters really care, it’s easy to get out on the streets of Bagh­dad. The 506^th Infantry Reg­i­ment — and other great mil­i­tary units — will take jour­nal­ists on their patrols vir­tu­ally any­where.” Well, no, they won’t. Some reporters I know are hav­ing trou­ble get­ting embeds because they’re not the “right” reporters. They don’t write the “right” kind of sto­ries — mean­ing they don’t fol­low the military’s play­book.
It’s more than a lit­tle churl­ish to say, “We’ll take you any­where, as long as you’re not too liberal/French/whatever” and then turn around and crit­i­cize those you refuse to take with you as cow­ards. If they sit­u­a­tion is so rosy, Mr. Peters, why on earth do I need to embed in the first place? Believe me, I’d much rather travel around with­out a mil­i­tary entourage. You tend to get more truth­ful answers from Iraqis when they’re not sur­rounded by sol­diers with big guns, after all.
Then, this guy with a “back­ground as an intel­li­gence offi­cer” goes on to say there’s no civil war because, by gosh, _he_ sure didn’t see any thing like that. And the Iraqis _cheered_ the Amer­i­cans!
Let me try to paint the pic­ture a lit­tle more clearly, Mr. Peters: When Sun­nis cheer the Amer­i­cans, it’s not because things are rosy, it’s because they’re more scared of the Shi’ites than they are of you. Sun­nis in Bagh­dad I’ve spo­ken with have told me they would rather be arrested by the Amer­i­cans than by the gov­ern­ment forces, because at least now the Amer­i­cans won’t tor­ture you _as badly._ They have no love for Amer­i­cans, they just know who is best able to pro­tect them from their neigh­bors.
Yes­ter­day, the gen­eral in charge of the Iraqi Army divi­sion in Bagh­dad was killed by a sniper while he was on patrol. An inves­ti­ga­tion has been opened because there are sus­pi­cions he was killed for being Sunni by one of his Shi’ite troops.
To be blunt: We are as close to full-scale civil war as we’ve ever been. We are one more bomb­ing, mas­sacre or atroc­ity from a national blood­let­ting. But even if that hap­pens, there will be ebbs and flows. Just because peo­ple aren’t curled up in the fetal posi­tion under their beds all the time doesn’t mean there’s not a war on of some kind. In Lebanon, for 15 years, peo­ple went to the beach, cafés, bars and, in gen­eral, tried to live a nor­mal life. For long stretches, a neigh­bor­hood would be calm. And then the shells would come, or a run­ning street bat­tle would break out and civil­ians would go run­ning inside to hide. The vio­lence would even­tu­ally pass, like a break­ing wave, and they would come out into the light. That’s the way war works, and that’s what’s hap­pen­ing in Bagh­dad right now.
Finally, two things: Mr. Peters says he has a back­ground in intel­li­gence. And he says he’s been hitch­ing rides with this unit, rather than being assigned to it. He also makes what may be an unin­ten­tion­ally ironic com­ment when he crit­i­cized Iraqi stringers: “The Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Amer­i­cans don’t pay for good news. So they exag­ger­ate the bad.“
First of all, the Amer­i­cans _do_ pay for good news. They have in the past, when _American officers_ wrote sto­ries and paid local papers to run them. These happy tales invari­ably painted a rosier pic­ture than was war­ranted.
Sec­ondly, Gen. George Casey, com­man­der of U.S. troops here, told reporters in a news con­fer­ence three days ago that the pay-for-play pro­gram was on-going. “We were oper­at­ing within our author­i­ties and respon­si­bil­i­ties,” he said, and added that he had not received an order to stop the pro­gram. “And, right now, based on the results of the inves­ti­ga­tion, I do not intend to in the near term.“
Thirdly, just what is Mr. Peters doing here? A for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cer, rid­ing around Bagh­dad, paint­ing a rosy pic­ture? I may just be assum­ing stuff here — hell, if Ralph can do it, so can I — but is Mr. Peters one of those story-planting Amer­i­cans? Was he out get­ting mate­r­ial and pic­tures? And has he taken his skills at writ­ing happy sto­ries to the Amer­i­can pub­lic?
Peters’ lit­tle yarns sure sounds nice, but he sounds either des­per­ately clue­less or will­fully blind. Offi­cials in the Amer­i­can embassy, at least, are very wor­ried that civil war is upon us, and it’s surely no coin­ci­dence that Casey has a rep­u­ta­tion for not want­ing to hear bad news. And so Peters con­tin­ues to think because he rolls around in an armored con­voy and no one takes a shot at him, there’s no civil war. As some­one I’m sure he admires once said, “absence of evi­dence is not evi­dence of absence.“
Rant over. For now.
*CORRECTION:* Slight cor­rec­tion regard­ing my post on Ralph Peters. He is with the 1^st Pla­toon of Bravo Bat­tery, 4 – 320 Field Artillery rather than the 506^th Infantry Reg­i­ment, which he men­tions far­ther down in his piece. My apologies.