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COMMENTARY
November 10, 2004
Bush country
Is it my imagination or has the very tone of the media -- that "MSM" or Main Stream Media to which they have been reduced in weblog shorthand -- changed in the last week? I am trying to account for a little heading in the New York Times that reads With Our Troops . It is small but it is a miracle all the same for the grey lady's position before the re-election of President Bush was ambiguous. The Pentagon's brilliant plan for embedding journalists with the military in this latest case with U.S. Marines in the front of action to exterminate the Jihadis of Fallujah in Iraq has been rolled back out. I call it brilliant because it subjects participating journalists to the rigors and dangers of frontline conflict. It thus appeals to those with the moral virtue of courage while bringing them emotionally onside. During the invasion of Iraq itself last year we had much more accurate and reasonable reporting from the "embeds" who wasted no time striking poses about "quagmire" or asking Why are we here? This in dramatic contrast with the press gallery that was already embedded in Baghdad and which had previously made its accommodations with the Saddam regime to occupy comfortable hotel space there. Working only with rumour and scuttlebutt they gave an entirely different picture of what was happening throughout Iraq and one which quickly proved false. That "war never solves anything" was a kind of motto for this latter group and of the "analysts" and desk-editors back home; when it was not their mantra. But in the immortal words of Richard Perle confronted with the phrase in a TV interview It has a better track-record than social work. War does solve problems. It is what removed Saddam Hussein from power uncovered his mass graves failed to uncover specific nuclear biological and chemical weapons did locate and remove mountains of the "conventional" sort and is now removing the Jihadis from Fallujah. It is what has brought elections to Afghanistan sent little girls to school brought food and hope to millions of starving and as an unintended side-effect increased the opium harvest and given the Afghan warlords a new lease on life. Nothing in life is perfect -- not even war -- but if there is going to be liberty anywhere in the world there are going to be wars to obtain it. The whole world is watching; and with special attention the whole Arab world is waiting to see what happens in Fallujah. The Sunni-version Jihadis who descended upon the flypaper of Iraq have built their chief fortress there (as the Shia-version did in Najaf). The proposition that the Americans are cowards who can't handle serious casualties and lack stomach for fighting house to house and eyeball to eyeball is being put to the test in millions of sometimes impressionable minds. And as we are already seeing with the Marines and their Iraqi allies pouring into Fallujah from three (official) or four (unofficial) sides they are very good at it. Within three days of insertion they are right into the warrens and alleyways of Jolan in the heart of the old city. The American military has proved extremely adaptable to whatever ground conditions it must face; there have been ingenious technological developments since 9/11 for finding and targeting guerrillas lurking by day and night and the Marines who go in are (as I know from electronic correspondence with a number of them) brave brave brave. I thought they were going in a month ago but it turned out they were only starting the dress rehearsal making feints and using air and occasionally "smart" artillery fire to "shape the battlefield" for what is happening now. More than shaping it they were creatively studying it and testing the enemy's reactions. Also drawing a noose around the town (with some underpublicized British help) to let civilians out but compel Jihadis to remain in situ. By the time the Marines go in they know the map and their enemy quite well. The Jihadis have no chance against them and only sinister luck will cost the allies large casualties in what is an elaborately booby-trapped environment. It is like the retaking of Hu? city from the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong after the Tet Offensive of 1968. In that case it took the Marines and their South Vietnamese allies 26 days of lane to lane and house to house and a loss of several hundred men -- plus many thousands of civilians the Communists had massacred during their brief moment in possession of the city. In the case of Fallujah knock on wood it will take days instead of weeks and dozens not hundreds of allied casualties. After which it should be rather more apparent to the demographic watching Al-Jazeera that Mr. Bush has indeed been re-elected and there will in fact be elections in Iraq. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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