Iraq: There’s a Reason They Never Tell Us the Good News
One of the common complaints you hear about the media with respect to Iraq is that they never tell the “good news” about, oh, you know, how wonderful people’s lives are now that there’s democracy and all. There’s this powerful kind of delusion floating about that Iraq is kind of like suburban Omaha now, only a little drier. Seriously, just the other day in my local paper some guy wrote in complaining that the media never talk about all the wonderful schools and clinics and everything that are being built.
The media doesn’t portray it that way because it’s as far from the truth as one can conceptually get. They don’t tell us the good news because, frankly, there is none. Via McClatchy:
…five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, they still swelter in the summer and freeze in the winter because of a lack of electricity. Government rations are inevitably late, incomplete or expired. Garbage piles up for days, sometimes weeks, emanating toxic fumes.
Five years. Five freakin’ years. But the Iraqis are being patient and waiting for the government to get its act together, right?
Increasingly, Iraqis are relying on militias and other armed groups to fill the services void. Stories abound of neighborhood militiamen commandeering power plants and forcing terrified engineers to flip the switches even during government blackouts, turning militants into heroes and further undermining the unpopular Maliki administration.
In some poor areas of Baghdad, militias or Iranian-backed charities have become the main source of propane tanks, food staples, garbage collection and other services that the government should provide.
When it comes down to it, it really is about keeping the water running and keeping the lights on. It really is as simple as that.
This administration will go down in history as the most willfully idiotic and willfully destructive bunch of fools ever to ascend to power in Washington.
And those looking for the good news in Iraq… Well, good luck with that.
March 17, 2008 at 1:00 am
Indeed. I have heard some stories of individual soldiers doing some remarkably good things - but those are despite Admin policy, not because of it. The main story in Iraq - how bad it really is - is still woefully under-covered. Shining light on those rare happy tales would distort the news dramatically.
Sounds like maybe some are having trouble reconciling the news with the view through rose-colored glasses that we’ve all been taught to use toward America’s rapacious foreign policy.
March 17, 2008 at 1:54 am
The Iraq war has been a colossal fuckup that no amount of telling will ever make any sense or do any good. As I see it at this point, the most useful thing we can do is to start campaigning for war crimes prosecution for those responsible, both in the United States and abroad. A pipe dream? Time will tell.
P.S. I find it interesting that two of the principle foreign politicians on the “responsibles” list, Tony Blair of the UK and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain are installing themselves in comfortable positions in the United States. Is the US destined to become the refuge of choice for contemporary war criminals?