THAT Didn’t Go So Well
There’s actually some Good News in the much-noted mea culpa by Newsweek’s repentant war supporter Ron Nordland: Nordland pegs current Iraqi unemployment at around 18%, which is way way down from early postwar estimates of 50+. But there’s some bad news too:
The four-square-mile Green Zone, the one place in Baghdad where foreigners are reasonably safe, could be a showcase of American values and abilities. Instead the American enclave is a trash-strewn wasteland of Mad Max-style fortifications. The traffic lights don’t work because no one has bothered to fix them. The garbage rarely gets collected. Some of the worst ambassadors in U.S. history are the GIs at the Green Zone’s checkpoints. They’ve repeatedly punched Iraqi ministers, accidentally shot at visiting dignitaries and behave (even on good days) with all the courtesy of nightclub bouncers – to Americans and Iraqis alike. Not that U.S. soldiers in Iraq have much to smile about. They’re overworked, much ignored on the home front and widely despised in Iraq, with little to look forward to but the distant end of their tours—and in most cases, another tour soon to follow.
The posture of US troops, placing a premium on force protection, is a political decision before anything else. It makes great sense from a domestic political perspective – it reduces objections to overseas deployment when fewer troops are dying. It is, in the short term, maximally humane to the soldiers under your command to try to keep the largest possible number alive. It also completely vitiates the larger mission. Wanting to keep from assigning American soldiers an impossible task was one of my main objections, in prospect, to conquering Iraq in the first place. Oh well.
Comment by Barry —
June 6, 2005 @ 10:51 am
18% unemployment? That’s really hard to believe (the reality, not that official figures say that).
I couldn’t see where he got that figure from.
Comment by Barry —
June 6, 2005 @ 4:46 pm
An additional comment – these soldiers in the Green Zone have got to have a safer job than most others in Iraq. They’re defending a fortizied zone. People who have to sweep around and look for trouble, and who live in smaller (probably crappier) bases are in worse shape. The Green Zone guys are probably more supervised, because they are closer to VIP’s, and encounter them more.
This suggests that the behavior of Joe Average Sweep and Destroy Grunt is pretty bad.
Comment by Krybo Amgine —
June 6, 2005 @ 5:22 pm
Barry:
Another possibility regarding the Green Zone guys is that the GZ checkpoint duties have been given to some of the, um, “less-disciplined” units. The theory being that a disfunctional unit is less dangerous to themselves and their fellow soldiers pulling garrison duty in the GZ rather than out on patrol in the Sunni triangle.
I don’t know either way. Just a thought.
Comment by Barry —
June 6, 2005 @ 6:05 pm
Possible.
If I were doing those assignments (and valued my career), and had a choice between an undisciplined soldier screwing with an American or Iraqi VIP, I think that I’d make sure that the undisciplined soldiers were off screwing with more politically expendable Iraqis, and no American VIP’s.
After all, there were two ways in which improved discipline would have prevented Abu Ghraib – (not torturing prisoners, or not taking photos. It all depends on one’s point of view.
Comment by Patinator —
June 7, 2005 @ 1:51 pm
Jim,
For other good news from the middle east check out Chrenkoff’s blog from down under (http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/). For the “Good News” sections scroll down to the bottom and look for it on the right hand side. His site is well linked and the data is overwhelming and granular, but the kind of data you will be hard pressed to find anywhere else.
Comment by Jim Henley —
June 7, 2005 @ 2:37 pm
I confess to not taking Chrenkoff very seriously. His “good news” largely comprises regurgitated press releases, Real Soon Now promises and irrelevancies (the famous school painting episodes). He’s basically a volunteer transmission belt for official spin. It’s not that there’s no genuine good news, but the opportunity costs of finding it in among Chrenkoff’s compendia of good news that isn’t quite real are too high.
Comment by Frank —
June 8, 2005 @ 3:00 am
Jim- In that last post of yours you hit on something I think important. I was pretty much with Bush up until about three months after the invasion when army spokesmen were saying we weren’t in a guerrilla war. Now I hardly read any conservative commenters anymore, where I used to read half a dozen. I just don’t see how it could be worth my time to dig through so many lies.
Comment by Jon H —
June 10, 2005 @ 2:26 am
“The four-square-mile Green Zone, the one place in Baghdad where foreigners are reasonably safe, could be a showcase of American values and abilities. Instead the American enclave is a trash-strewn wasteland of Mad Max-style fortifications.”
.
If the Green Zone were well-kept, chances are it’d be through Iraqi labor, and might come off looking less like evidence of our values, and more like evidence of our affluence. Especially if hired help started cleaning up now. The lesson would be that we don’t value it enough to clean it up ourselves, but have the money to pay people to clean up after us.
.
Another thought: Why is trash and debris allowed to collect in the Green Zone, when any clump of trash could conceal an IED?